


You or Your Memory

by tigrrmilk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M, OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT HE THINKS, clint barton is the avengers' landlord AU, don't let clint barton do DIY AU, i mean kind of???, like it's the same setting as they're in now but they weren't... born... in the 1910s...., the avengers still exist but steve isn't involved and doesn't care AU, various background pairings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2072406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve broke up with Bucky the summer that he turned 19.</p><p>It wasn't the best decision he ever made.</p><p>It's almost ten years later, and Bucky's back, but Steve doesn't know what to do about that. He also doesn't know what to do about the fact that somebody is trying to destroy the building that he lives and works in, and all of the people in it. </p><p>But somebody's got to do something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the great dividing range

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as one thing, but became another. it started as an attempt to write a modern day _persuasion_ AU (and it still totally is that) but it also became a fanfic about modern day steve rogers if he was never captain america, if he lived in a universe that's closer to _hawkeye_ than the MCU, and if the avengers all still had secret identities.
> 
> you shouldn't need to know anything about _hawkeye_ to be able to follow this, although i recommend it strongly to anyone who hasn't read it yet.

 

 

I know we’ve been as far apart as this before  
But take a look at what we’ve got to get through

**\- the lucksmiths, _the great dividing range_**

\---

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Natasha says, the second time Steve walks past her apartment in the space of about half an hour.

“Nothing,” Steve says.

“You’re hanging around like the damp in my ceiling,” Natasha says, and wrinkles her nose at him. She’d opened her door to call after him and now Steve can smell something delicious. He hasn’t eaten breakfast, he should probably do that. That’s a thing he could do.

Steve sighs. “Sorry, sorry - want me to take another look?”

Natasha flashes him a wicked grin. “No, it’s been fine ever since that last time you worked on it. Clint was never any use at all.”

“Hey!” Steve hears Clint call from inside Natasha’s apartment. “I did the grunt work!”

“Sure,” Natasha says, “I’m so grateful!”

Steve smiles. Clint doesn’t say anything else, apparently placated. Natasha puts her heads to one side and looks at Steve for a minute. Steve looks down at his feet.

“But seriously, what’s up? Do you want some eggs? I’ve got, like, way too many eggs.” Steve can smell them. He does kind of want some if it’s going, but he’s on call. He scratches his chin.

“New tenant’s going to be here soon,” he says. “Didn’t really plan anything else for this morning. I’ve been checking all the light fixtures on the stairwell.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at him. “So that’s why you’re stomping around, making the ceilings shake. Wait here.” She vanishes back into her apartment, leaving the door ajar. Steve waits for a minute, tapping the little alarm in his pocket that should let him know if anybody rings the bell to be let into the building.

Clint appears at the door with a big sandwich. It smells like egg. “Natasha says you’ve got to take this and eat it. I cooked the eggs.”

“Boo,” Natasha calls from inside. Steve takes the sandwich. It’s wrapped in foil. Very thoughtful.

He takes a bite, and it’s got tomato in it too. He gives Clint a thumbs up, and then the alarm in his pocket starts to vibrate. “Ah, she’s here,” he says. “See you later. Thanks.”

Clint salutes as he starts to vault down the stairs. “Remember to tell her about the party on the roof!”

 

***

 

When Steve gets to the building’s front door the new tenant’s not actually there, just somebody trying to deliver a fridge to somebody Steve’s never heard of. It takes a while to get rid of him, and as he goes back to the building he notices a woman standing by the front door, her phone in her hand. “Hi,” he says, slightly flustered. “Are you Rebecca?”

She’s got a big IKEA bag under her arm and sunglasses pushed back, resting on the top of her head. She has long dark hair that’s half-fallen into her face. “Yeah,” she says. “Are you Steve?”

“Yes,” he says, and he’s about to shake her hand when he realises he’s still holding half of the sandwich. “Let’s show you to your apartment.”

The elevator’s working, which is good, so they go straight up. Steve usually just runs it, but the bag looks heavy, and nobody else likes walking up to the sixth floor anyway. He apologetically inhales the rest of his sandwich and then crumples up the foil and stuffs it into his pocket. “Late breakfast,” he says, and Rebecca smiles.

He hands over the keys and takes her bag for her as she unlocks the door, and then washes his hands in the kitchen sink. She takes photos of everything while he stands in the doorway. “There’s, uh, some sort of party happening on the roof tonight,” he says. “If you’re free you should come. Meet the neighbours.”

“In New York?” she asks, stony-faced for a second before she smiles. “Is this one of those weird buildings where everybody knows everybody else?”  
  
“Uh,” Steve says, because it totally is.

“No, sounds good,” she says. “Should I bring anything?”

“Nah, you’re new,” Steve says, and rubs his neck. “Clint will be grilling up whatever, but if you don’t eat meat you might want to bring something along. Usually starts at about eight.”

“Meat’s fine,” she says. “My brother’s going to be helping me move stuff in, OK if I bring him?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve says. “Right, anything I can do for you? Otherwise I’ll leave you to it.”

She looks pensive, and then says, “you any good at IKEA?”

 

***

 

Steve’s not much of a fan of flat-pack furniture - he likes to buy antiques if he can, they last longer - but he’s not met a set of screws and pieces of wood that he’s had too much trouble with yet (well, except the cabinet that Natasha bought last year, but she did get him drunk before setting him loose with it).

It turns that what Rebecca’s got in the bag is a flatpack bookcase. “My brother’s bringing all my old stuff over later on,” she says, “but I’ve got more space here so I thought I’d get one of these.”

Steve looks at the instructions and rubs his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I can probably do it. Just want to get it done before James gets here. He always loses the screws.”

“I know the type,” Steve says, and smiles as he thinks about trying to keep Clint away while he was working on Natasha’s apartment a few weeks ago. “It’s fine, I’m not doing anything else this afternoon.”

He reads the instructions over again and then opens the box and takes the pieces out. “Let’s start at the bottom,” he says, and twirls the allen wrench around in his fingers.

 

***

 

“So,” Rebecca says, as she slots one of the shelves in. “You look kinda familiar. Where you from?”

“Ah... I grew up not far from here,” Steve says. “Went to college in Manhattan, then moved here when I got the job.”

“Big traveller,” Rebecca says. He grimaces. “But... my family lived around here for a bit, I think. They moved a lot. I was away at school, mostly. Maybe I saw you around.”

“It’s a small world,” Steve says. “Around here, anyway.”

“I dunno,” she says, “seems pretty big to me.”

 

***

 

Steve leaves when they finish the bookcase, and goes up to his room on the top floor. He’d been offered the big first floor apartment when he got his job but he’d turned it down in favour of this, because he likes the view and he likes the stairs, and not everybody does. He’s got to order a couple replacement light fittings and he’s got to phone up the people about the trash collection, but he spends a few minutes staring out the window and tapping on the glass with his left hand. Rebecca seems familiar to him too, but he doesn’t think he’s met her before.

 _James_? He thinks. High school and his childhood are starting to blur into a mass of asthma and spelling tests and sometimes trying to get detention on purpose so that he’d have an excuse to walk home later than the kids who liked to pick on him.

He finally sighs, comes away, and picks up the phone. He hates the trash people.

 

***

 

“So?” Clint asks, when Steve climbs up to the roof. He’s got a case of beer, and a book wedged under his arm because Clint always makes him turn up early and then he and Natasha spend half an hour arguing about something that Steve doesn’t understand.

Also, he’s been trying to finish this book for weeks and every time he gets into it something distracts him. He pops the top off one of the beers and settles in with it before the rest of the building turns up. A few pages in, he looks up and sees the sun setting across Brooklyn, and he can’t help but smile. It’s a good night for it, even if Clint is loudly swearing at the hot dogs in his corner, while Natasha’s setting up a little table with some bread and salad. Steve kicks the beer out in front of him so that it’s clear he’s not just hoarding it, and then reads a few more pages before everyone else arrives.

 

***

 

“Doesn’t seem like you’re in the mood for a party,” Sam says, as he eases himself in next to Steve. Steve puts his book down and stretches out. Sam passes him a burger, the bun slightly burnt on the top.

“You alright?” Steve asks. “Nice day?”

“Yeah, good,” Sam says.

“How’re the birds?”

Sam crosses his arms. “You don’t care about the birds, man.”

“Sure I do,” Steve says. “Best friends you ever had, those birds.”

“Nah,” Sam says. “They’re just work friends.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Steve says. “Nobody ever made any friends worth a damn where they work.”

“You watch your mouth,” Clint says, gesturing with his spatula slightly too wildly. Fat crackles in the air like catherine wheels, and Clint swears and retreats from the conversation to turn the burgers over.

Sam opens one of Steve’s beers and says “it’s different for you. You’ve only got work friends.”

“Depends,” Steve says, draining the last of his beer.

“On what you count as work? Yeah, you’re lazy. Always said that about you.”

“On who I count as my friends,” Steve says. He sees Rebecca appear on the other side of the roof and pushes himself up from the ground.

“Oh, that’s how it is?” Sam says, and follows him up. “That the new tenant?”

Steve nods, and waves at Rebecca, who walks over to them once she’s got a hot dog from Clint. “Is this safe to eat?” she asks. “The onions look kinda dangerous.”

“Clint’s a pretty good cook,” Sam says, “you’ll be OK. I’m Sam, by the way. Live on the fourth floor.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sam,” Rebecca says. The roof has started to fill up, and Steve can see more people that he should probably introduce Rebecca to, but it’s a nice evening and he’s enjoying just being off-duty for a few minutes.

“You all set up?” he asks her, and offers her a beer.

“James brought my stuff over,” she says, and takes the beer. “Lots of unpacking to do, but he’s staying with me for a couple weeks, so he can help with that.”

“What else is family for?” Steve asks, and walks over to Clint for some more food. He’s just taken a bite into his second burger when he turns around in time to see Rebecca’s brother join her and Sam. He’s tall, longish dark hair, and Steve hasn’t got a good look at his face but he thinks - he thinks, maybe he does know him after all.

He walks over, Clint in tow (Natasha’s taken over the last of the grilling). “Hey,” Clint says, as he wipes his hands on his shirt. “Rebecca! You moved in ok?”

Rebecca and her brother turn around, and Sam pauses in the middle of an anecdote about the birds. He rolls his eyes at Steve with a smile, but Steve doesn’t smile back, because Steve - Steve finally gets a good look at Rebecca’s brother - James - and his stomach swoops as fast as if he’d fallen down an elevator shaft.

He knows him.

  
“This is my brother James,” she says to Clint. “Oh, and this is Steve,” she says, as an afterthought, knocking her brother with her elbow and indicating towards him. “He helped me put that bookcase up earlier.”

James looks at Steve, and doesn’t say anything.

Steve can’t read his look. “Uh,” Steve says, and puts out his hand.

“We actually know each other,” James says. He’s not talking to Steve. “New Rotterdam High, class of 2005.”

“I knew it!” Rebecca says with a whoop. “I knew he looked familiar!”

James doesn’t shake Steve’s hand, so he awkwardly puts it back in his pocket.

“Ah,” James says, “I doubt it. We didn’t hang out much.”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

Rebecca frowns slightly, and then offers James a can of the mango juice she’d brought up with her. He takes it and pops the top, and then says, “so what d’you say we say hello to the rest of the building?”

Sam offers to take them round to everyone, so they leave Clint and Steve by themselves.

“You want to talk about it?” Clint asks, after a minute.

“Never,” Steve says. He feels like somebody punched him in the face. Or the chest. He doesn’t understand how he’s still standing. Clint claps him on the shoulder.

Of course his real name was James. He can’t believe he forgot that.

He looks really different. He looks exactly the same.

“High school sucks,” Clint says, with feeling, and Steve realises he can’t look as bad as he feels because that’s - that’s not - that’s not it at all. “Hey, you’ve got a beer left.”

Steve takes it because it’s there, and then he lets himself be pulled along to where Natasha’s starting a game of bridge, even though he can never remember the rules and she’s given up on trying to teach him. He waits until the first couple of people have left the party, and then he excuses himself. He picks up his book and the empty bottles, and he waves goodnight to Sam, and he goes down to his apartment. He doesn’t turn the light on, and he kicks off his shoes and lies on top of his bed. He doesn’t close his eyes or get under the covers, or get washed and changed out of his clothes, for a long, long time.

 

***

 

Here’s how Bucky looks different:

Long hair, less facially expressive, he’s got a prosthetic arm, he stands differently, he doesn’t meet anybody’s eyes. Stubble.

Here’s how Bucky looks the same:

Eyes, nose, mouth, chin. Same height. Same voice. The shapes he makes when he speaks.

 

***

 

Natasha finds him the next day as he’s fixing a pipe in Jessica and Luke’s apartment. Their baby’s crying, and Luke’s singing to it, and Steve didn’t get any sleep and he’s got a headache already, so he could really have done without all of this. Natasha’s useful, though. She passes him the tools he needs and doesn’t say anything.

“I’m fine,” he says. He decides to go with Clint’s thing. “Nobody had a good time in high school.”

Natasha looks at him. “I always thought that people who look like the homecoming committee moulded them out of clay probably did fine.”

Steve makes a face. “We didn’t have a homecoming committee,” he says, “and until twelfth grade I was five five on a good day and I weighed about a hundred pounds.”

“I learned everything I know about American high school from old John Cusack movies,” Natasha says. She pauses as Steve tightens up the new piece of pipe he’s put in.

“But, so, what? He beat you up behind the dumpsters?” she says. “Want me to set his school bag on fire for you?”

“Nothing like that,” Steve says. “It was a long time ago.”

She gives him a look. “Last night Kate seemed interested, but if he’s bad news I’ll warn her off.”

Steve’s stomach clenches. “No, don’t say anything about it,” he says. “If anything, I think I was the jerk back then.”

Natasha laughs, and stands up to go. “I don’t believe you, Rogers,” she says, “but Kate wouldn’t listen to me if I told her anything anyway.”

 

***

 

Steve’s got the afternoon off (which means that Clint’s on call instead of him, so he hopes that there’re no maintenance emergencies) so he gets the subway into Manhattan to get a coffee with Peggy, who’s got some job for the UN that he’s not allowed to know about.

They talk in Russian and then German for the first half an hour, and then Steve laughs and scoops up the last of the froth from his drink with a spoon and licks it off. “So, how’re you doing?” he asks.

“Can’t complain,” Peggy says, with a smile. “How’s your class?”

Steve puts his head to one side. “I don’t know,” he says. “I like the reading.”

“Well, give it time,” Peggy says. “Anyway, I got an interesting text last night.”

“Yeah?” Steve says. He wonders about getting another cup of coffee.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sam says you’ve got someone from high school staying in your building and that you looked like you wanted to throw up on him.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and scrapes a hand across his face. “That.”

“Yes, that,” Peggy says.

“Bucky’s sister moved into my building,” Steve says, wearily. “Bucky helped her moved her stuff in, and I didn’t realise who she was or who he was until they appeared at the roof party last night because I’d managed to forget that his real name was James.”

“Oh, Steve,” Peggy says, and offers him some of her cake. Steve shakes his head, so she spears a chunk of it on her fork and eats it thoughtfully. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “He wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Well, you did break his heart,” Peggy says. “He always was one to hold a grudge.”

“Hey,” Steve says. “I didn’t break his heart. You told me it’d work out best... if I broke it off before he went away.”

“No,” Peggy says, and points her fork at him. “You can’t blame me for this.”

Steve puts his hands up. “Hey, I made the decision. It’s on me.”

“All I said was, make sure you’re both in it for the long haul, and if not it’d be better if you broke up before he left.”

Steve groans and hides his head in his hands. “I know,” he says. “I remember.”

“Oh, do try not to worry about it so much,” Peggy says. “You were very young.” Steve pulls a face, but at least Peggy buys him a second cappuccino before she has to head back to work.

“Don’t say anything to Sam?” Steve asks Peggy, as she sorts out her scarf. “Who do you take me for?” she asks, mock stern, and then kisses him on the top of his head. “Cheer up,” she says. “You’ll barely see him.”

 

***

 

Steve buys takeout for himself and Sam on his way back to the building (Sam has a persuasive way with emoji), and he bumps into Clint and Kate on the stairs. They’re arguing about something to do with archery - Kate’s an olympic hopeful, and Clint’s her trainer, or at least he helps her train sometimes - but they stop to say hi as Steve goes past.

“Enjoy your afternoon off?” Clint asks, and gives Steve back his buzzer.

“Yeah, I went for coffee with Peggy,” Steve says. “We spoke German to each other.”

“Romantic,” Clint says, and waggles his eyebrows. Steve sighs and closes his eyes, and it’s only when he opens them again that he realises that Bucky - James - is walking towards them. Great.

“Hey, James,” Kate says, lightly touching him on the shoulder. He stops. “We’re going to have some drinks on the roof later, you should come!”

“I don’t get what it is with all of you and your roof,” James says, but he smiles at her. “I’m still helping Rebecca to unpack, but I’ll see what we can do. Just running out for some food.”

Steve bought way too much takeout - as usual, he can never decide what he wants - and he almost offers to share (he’s got some great duck in plum sauce and Bucky’d always loved that), but he doesn’t say anything. James smiles at Kate again and then ducks his head and continues on down the stairs.

“You should come too,” Kate says to Steve, a hand on her hip. “You left too early last night.”

“I could have other things going on,” Steve says, defensively. “I’m a busy guy.”

Kate looks pointedly at the plastic bag in his hand. “Yeah, I’m sure you and Sam have a lot planned.”

 

***

 

Sam makes Steve take the food up to the roof anyway - “I don’t want you eating duck in my apartment, what’s wrong with you,” - so they’re already up there when Kate and Clint emerge. She’s got her bow and some arrows, and she spends a few minutes shooting apples on the other side of the roof before she comes to settle down with them.

“Why not shoot something on the next roof over?” Sam asks. “More of a challenge.”

“You think I’m made of arrows?” Kate asks. “I wouldn’t be able to get them back.”

“Hey, I can totally jump that far,” Clint says, and flexes.

The rest of them stare at him until he deflates. “Well, I did manage it that time,” he says.

“Please don’t remind me of anything you’ve ever done,” Kate says. Steve wordlessly hands him a half-full box of rice and he eats it quietly.

“So, what d’you think of Rebecca and James?” Sam asks, after a few minutes. Kate sits ramrod straight and looks to see if they’re coming. “Calm down,” Sam says. “I’m not gonna say anything bad, are you?”

Kate blushes and looks down at her hands.

“Thought not,” Sam says, and eats the last spring roll. He turns to Steve and says, “Hey - last night, James said you looked so different that he hardly recognised you.”

Steve feels like someone just stabbed him in the stomach. “I, uh,” he says, “I get that a lot when I see people from high school. I used to be... smaller.”

“Aren’t you a bit young to be after James?” Clint asks Kate, who scowls at him.

“I’m not after anyone,” she says. “Anyway, I’m 21 and he’s, what? Can’t be older than 30.”

“28,” Steve says. He can’t help himself.

“There you go,” Kate says.

“Smaller how?” Sam asks, ignoring Clint and Kate.

“Oh, you know,” Steve says. “Have I never shown you the photos?”

“No you have not,” Sam says. Steve sighs and gets out his phone. He finds a few pictures that he’d put on there the last time he’d had this conversation - Peggy and Natasha need to never be allowed to meet again - and passes it over to Sam, who laughs like a child.

“This is not you,” Sam says, shaking his head. “I don’t believe you. Kate, look at this!”

Steve’s phone does the round, and as Clint’s laughing at it meanly (and he’s definitely seen those photos before), Rebecca and James appear on the roof with a pitcher of lemonade and a stack of plastic cups.

“James!” Sam calls, and he takes Steve’s phone from Clint. “Steve was just showing us some old photos - is this really what he looked like in high school?”

Steve can’t stop himself from grimacing as James takes the phone, and swipes through the album of old school photos. Rebecca peers over his shoulder. Steve watches him intently from under his eyelashes. James doesn’t react for a while, and then he hands the phone back to Sam.

“Yeah,” he says, “looks about right.”

“I definitely recognise you,” Rebecca says, and sits down next to Steve. She eyes him thoughtfully. “You look so different now. But kind of the same.”

“Everybody grows up,” James says, and lies down a further away from them, propped up on his elbows. “For example,” he says, “when I was nineteen I wouldn’t have been this tired from just unpacking books and rearranging Rebecca’s fifteen lamps all day.”

Steve takes his phone back and puts it into his pocket.

“When you were nineteen you were doing heavy lifting on a boat somewhere,” Rebecca says, and she leans over to lightly punch his foot. “Now you’re an old man.”

He stretches and looks at her over his sunglasses. “You never actually listened when I told you about what I did in the Navy, did you?”

She twists her mouth to one side but can’t stop herself from laughing. “I’m sure you lifted _something_ ,” she says.

“Hey,” he says, and flicks a bit of lemonade at her. “Show some respect for your armed forces.”

“Hey,” she says, “I made that lemonade.”

He grins and finishes off his cup.

It’s the most Steve’s heard him speak since - since before what feels like the beginning of time. He seems - Steve’s relieved that he’s only monosyllabic and gloomy when he’s being made to address him directly. He’s glad that he seems happy.

He feels kind of sick when he thinks about what that means, but that’s ludicrous. It’s been almost a decade.

Kate pours herself a cup of the lemonade and lies back near James, but not quite touching him. She holds her hand over her eyes “So, how long are you staying?” she says. “You live nearby?”

He looks over at Rebecca, who throws up her hands. “Not sure,” he says. “Rebecca’s got a futon and I’m between places. Got discharged a few months ago and my physical therapist’s nearby, so here’s useful. But if I’m around for too long Rebecca’ll want to kill me, so...”

“Ah,” Clint says. “I’m sure we can work something out before then. There’s the apartment on eight that Steve’s been fixing up, could probably let it to you cheap since it needs replastering.”

James looks at him until he realises what he’s said. “Oh!” Clint says, and sits up. “I own the building. Did Rebecca not say that I own the building?” He puts out his hand and makes James shake it.

“This fuckin’ building,” James says, and he shakes his head.

 

***

 

Kate spends about half an hour making them all throw pennies into a cup from further and further away (she, Clint and James are all good, Steve and Rebecca are terrible), and then it starts to get dark and Steve thinks that maybe he should go and finish some of his reading before bed.

Rebecca’s just finished telling them some awful story about her ex-boyfriend - apparently he’s a photographer at the Bugle and all he ever wants to discuss is Spider-man - when it happens.

“So,” Clint says, as casually as he can manage, lobbing a penny at James. “You seeing anyone, now that you’re here for the foreseeable?”

Steve wants to groan, but he doesn’t. He hates everyone. He hates his friends. He hates this building. He hates his boss. He hates his life.

From the look on Kate’s face, he bets he’s not the only one.

James stretches. “Nah,” he says. “Had a girlfriend a couple of years when I was in the Navy, but it didn’t really stick. Was seeing a guy I met out there for a while when I got back, but I dunno. Wasn’t really happening.”

He pauses and throws the penny at the cup, which is by the edge of the roof. He misjudges it, for the first time that night, and the penny falls off the building.

“Just having fun, I guess,” he says. “What right have I got to expect anything better?”

“Bucky,” Rebecca says, reproachful. “Come on.”

Steve stares up at him and doesn’t know what to say, but he wants to say something.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky says, and stands up. “Maybe you can go and tell the eligible ladies and gentlemen of New York that they’d be lucky to have me, cos you’ve already told me that and it ain’t helpful.”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

“Come on,” she says, and gets up too. “We’re gonna call it a night. Might make him watch some Oprah before I let him sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and mock-salutes them. He doesn’t look at Steve, but he doesn’t avoid looking at him either. It’s like they never knew each other. “See you around, kids.”

“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Sam says, once James and Rebecca have gone inside. Kate throws a cup at Clint’s head, but he catches it.

“Hey,” Clnt says. “It’s a normal enough question. And who the hell is Bucky?”

“His nickname,” Steve says, and then sighs deeply. “Only name he went by at school. Thought James was too stuck-up, I guess.”

Clint nods, and Kate gives Steve a look that says, we are going to have words.

“Think it’s time for me to turn in too,” Steve says, and stands up.

“Hey, me too,” Sam says, and between them they pick up all the trash strewn around. There’s like three dollars in loose change that Steve drops into the cup that Clint’s still holding.

“See you later,” Steve says. “I’ve got class tomorrow afternoon, so don’t break the building while I’m out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint says, and waves them off. “You know who’d be footing the bill if we did.”

 

***

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam says, as they rinse the takeout containers in Steve’s sink.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Steve says.

“Just never seen you so quiet,” he says. “Natasha says you said he didn’t beat you up or anything, but when he talks you look like you want to cry. So? You ask him to prom and he never showed up?”

“Nope,” Steve says, and claps Sam on the shoulder. “I’m just worried about this class I’ve got tomorrow. Gotta talk about this book I haven’t even finished yet.”

He pointedly looks down at where it’s resting on his couch.

“OK, OK,” Sam says. “Well, you know where I am.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he kicks back with the book. _Open City_. He’s got like half of it still to go.

 

***

 

The next week passes - Steve doesn’t fall asleep in his class, the weather’s good enough that they spend a couple more evenings on the roof (Steve makes a pie one time and everybody loves it), and nobody else asks him “Do you want to talk about it?” which is, well it’s not the making of a good week but it’s at least a sign that this week is better than the last.

On Tuesday evening, he ends up alone on the roof with Kate after Natasha and Clint leave, and he thinks she’s going to try and talk to him but he’s tired and she’s in a bad mood because she’d twisted her ankle during training that morning, and they end up sharing the last of the bowl of cherries. They get competitive over how far they can spit the stones. Steve can spit them farther, but Kate can actually aim them. They decide on zones and points. It’s like playing darts.

When he leaves to go to bed, Kate puts her hand on his arm and makes a serious face like she’s going to say something, but Steve blanches and she sighs. He goes to bed and resolutely thinks about nothing except pipes and aircon units and garbage men.

 

***

 

On Thursday evening, he’s hanging out in Sam’s apartment while Sam makes potato soup when there’s a knock. He opens the door, and Rebecca’s there.

“Hey,” she says. “Hot water’s not working. I know you’re not really on duty in the evening, but.”

Steve grimaces. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “I’ll come and have a look. You need it done now, or can I come along in half an hour?”

He’s really hungry and he’s just cut a lot of bread up.

“Half an hour should be OK,” she says. “I just want to have a shower before I go to bed.”

She nods and opens her mouth to say goodbye, but Sam says “Wait! Have you eaten?”

All three of them stare at the very large pot of soup that Sam has made for dinner.

“I could eat,” she says, and walks through the door and collapses into the chair next to Steve, her head in her hands. She finally sits up when Sam places a bowl of soup in front of her.

“You OK?” Steve says, kind of alarmed. She gives him a thumbs up and a wry smile.

“Moving is just way more stressful than I remember,” she says, “plus I got this big last minute job from a client I can’t afford to turn down so I got about four hours sleep last night.”

She dunks a big chunk of bread in the soup, chews, swallows, and then sighs. “And I can’t stop worrying about James, which doesn’t help because if he senses that anybody’s worried about him he gets really angry at them. And then he gets angry at himself.”

Steve nods, as if he knows, and she narrows her eyes at him.

Steve eats his soup in silence.

When they finish eating, he traipses to her apartment and spends the rest of the evening fiddling with the pipes. By the time he leaves he’s sweaty, covered in rust and dust and probably other types of filth that he doesn’t want to investigate further, and he smells, but at least Rebecca and James won’t freeze if they try and shower.

James and Rebecca are sitting in the living room, which Steve has to walk through to leave. “Uh, it’s fixed,” Steve says, kind of unnecessarily.

“Thanks!” Rebecca says. “I’d hug you but you look like you need a shower yourself.”

James lifts a hand in what’s almost a wave, but it comes out closer to the gesture drivers make when they let you cross the road ahead of them. Steve guesses it’s at least a positive acknowledgement, and then tries his best not to think about Bucky as he takes a long shower to get all of the grime off.

 

***

 

On Friday afternoon, Clint comes to find him as he’s working on the new door for the apartment on the eighth floor. “Hey,” Steve says, wary. “You’re not here to help, are you?”

“Don’t worry,” Clint says, and he doesn’t even look particularly offended. “Looks like James wants to have a look around the apartment, he might take it for a few months. Could probably help you with the plastering, too. Should I send him up to see, or is now a bad time?”

“Sure,” Steve says. “Door’s almost in.”

Ten minutes later Steve’s dusting the door down and he turns around to see James leaning against the wall, watching him. “Uh,” he says. “Hi.”

“Hey,” James says.

“I need to put a new lock in, and Clint told you it needs plastering, but otherwise it’s pretty much ready,” Steve says, and dusts his hands on his jeans. “Want to take a look?”  
  
“Sure,” James says, and Steve steps aside to let him in.

“What about the people on the other side?” James asks, and places his hand on the dividing wall.

“Oh, that’s where Marc lives,” Steve says. “He’s pretty weird, but he’s quiet and nice enough. He works nights, mostly.”

“Is it weird for you?” James asks, abruptly, and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Not Marc. I mean. This, uh, whole thing.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Not sure weird is the word.”

He scowls and looks away.

“No,” Steve says. “That came out wrong. I just mean - it’s nice to see you again, Bucky.” He pauses. “Or - are you just James now?”

“Bucky’s fine,” he says. “Don’t really mind. Just - it’s nice to not have people call me by my surname.”

Steve doesn’t really know what to say to that. He’s just showing Bucky where the majority of the damage is (the bedroom walls, and no, Steve didn’t ask what happened there, he was mostly just relieved when Hank and Abigail moved out) when there’s a knock on the door. He jogs to the apartment door and opens it, and it’s Peggy.

“Hello,” she says. “I’ve got the afternoon free, so I thought I’d bring you over that German dictionary I keep promising you. Clint said you were up here.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. He takes the dictionary. It’s heavy, and the brown cover is real leather. He runs a hand over it. “Fancy getting dinner tonight?” she asks.

“Oh, sure,” he says. “I’ll be here for a bit longer, but then I’m free. You can wait upstairs if you like.” He passes her back the dictionary and gives her the key to his apartment.

He hears Bucky come into the room behind him, and moves so that he’s not blocking the door. “You remember Peggy?” he says. Peggy smiles, slightly strained.

“Of course I do,” Bucky says. “Right, all looks fine to me. See you.”

He walks out of the apartment and down the stairs, and he doesn’t look back. Steve hadn’t even got to showing him the bathroom, but he can’t bring himself to call after him. As Bucky vanishes from view, Steve realises he’s never seen him use the elevator. “Uh, right,” he says to Peggy. “I’ll just lock up here and then we can dump this in my room and go out.”

“It’s early,” she says. “I thought I’d pop in and say hi to Natasha first. You can finish up here.”

She leaves him with his key and dictionary, and Steve stands alone in the empty apartment for a few minutes before he goes upstairs to change into a nice shirt and some slightly less grubby shoes.

 

***

 

On Saturday morning, Steve wakes up early and walks down the block to get some coffee from the shop on the corner. He’s got his own coffee maker, but he’s out of beans and milk, and he’s too tired to actually sort that out and make something himself.

He’s not been sleeping well.

He sits in the corner and sips at his drink and scrapes the foam off the side of the cup with his spoon, and he reads a magazine that somebody else left behind. He’s in the middle of a long review of a book he’s never going to read when he looks up and sees Kate and Bucky at the counter. They haven’t seen him, or maybe they’re pretending that they haven’t. Kate’s saying something, but Steve only catches the odd word - Natasha, don’t, safer.

At one point, he swears he hears his own name. He looks up, on reflex, and they stop talking. They must have seen him now, he thinks, but they don’t come over. They both look as tired as Steve feels, and Bucky’s wearing the same clothes he had on the night before. Steve looks back at his magazine, but his head won’t stop buzzing until they leave.

 

***

 

Clint’s got a band-aid over his nose and another one near his temple when Steve sees him that evening, but he doesn’t ask about it. Stuff like that just seems to happen to him. He’s on his way up to his apartment, but Clint stops him. He leans on Natasha’s door, and keeps his voice low.

“Hey,” Clint says. “You seen anyone weird hanging outside recently?”

Steve pulls a face. “It’s Brooklyn,” he says, but Clint just looks at him.

Steve sighs. “Not that I can think of,” he says, and then thinks again. “Day Rebecca moved in a guy seemed really insistent that he had to deliver a fridge to somebody whose name I didn’t recognise, but I managed to get him to leave.”

“What did he look like?” Clint asks. “And what was the name?”

“Ahh, I don’t know. Bald. Black sweatpants. Had a white van.”

“You see him again, or anyone else like that-”

“What, making a delivery?”

Clint rubs a hand over his face. Steve ducks his head.

“Just, let me know.”

Steve nods, and puts a hand on Clint’s shoulder. He looks so tired. Is he the only person who got any sleep last night? “Are you OK?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

Clint smiles at him, and says, “Nothing, I was just talking to a friend who told me they’d had some trouble recently a few blocks over, similar kind of building to this.”

What kind of trouble? But Steve doesn’t ask.

“There are no buildings like this,” Steve says, instead, and Clint smiles again.

 

***

 

The thing is, it’s true. Steve’s never seen or heard of anywhere like it.

Steve was taking an evening class the year after he dropped out of college to look after his mother when he met Natasha for the first time. It was a life-drawing class, and they sat next to each other.

The first time they spoke, Natasha said, “I like your drawing.”

The second time they spoke, Natasha said, “hey, don’t you help teach that self-defence class on Tuesday evenings?”

Steve had said yes, and then asked if she was thinking of coming along. He didn’t ask how she knew that he taught the class.

Natasha had smiled and said that she was thinking about it.

The third time they spoke, Natasha had asked Steve something about a story in the news (well, she’d asked him who he thought Iron Man really was), and he’d said, “you know what, I try to keep up, I read all the politics pages and the op eds, but all this superhero stuff?”

“What,” Natasha had asked, amused, “you don’t want to be just like Iron Man when you grow up?”

Steve had rolled his eyes.

The time after that, they’d talked about art. Natasha’s big into early 20th century European painting, and mid-century modern art. Steve likes the impressionists, mostly, but he’s open to anything.

Natasha had taken him to see some Cy Twombly paintings at MOMA one afternoon a month or so after that, and he hadn’t been able to explain to her how he felt, but he stood in front of each of them for a long time. His mother wasn’t going to be able to keep her apartment anymore - she needed hospice care - and he needed to look for somewhere to live but he hadn’t been able to yet.

When he started to think about it, it was like his head short-circuited itself.

There were so many red strokes on this painting, and they didn’t add up to make a shape. Pink and dark red too. Like blood, or the inside of a body.

 

***

 

After they’d left MOMA, Natasha had said to Steve, “let’s grab a coffee,” and had taken him to an unmarked hotel bar a few blocks over. The room was only half-lit, but the coffee was good, and Steve didn’t ask how she knew about it. It was quiet, and cool, and he was glad to not be somewhere with lots of other people.

That was the summer he turned 22, and it was the worst summer of his life.

“Hey,” Natasha said, after a while. “I don’t know if you’re interested, but my friend just bought an apartment building. He’s looking for a kind of... live-in caretaker. Bit more hands-on than your average superintendent, but, that kind of thing.”

Steve flopped back in his chair. “When’s he need them to start?”

He’d been an RA his last year of college before he had to leave, so it didn’t seem too much of a leap.

Mostly, he just didn’t want to worry about his own life anymore. It felt so small.

He hadn’t thought about the details of what “more hands-on” meant until later.

 

***

 

Steve goes up to the roof on Sunday evening, but nobody’s really around. He texts Sam to see if he wants to hang out, but he’s tied up for another hour at least, he says. It’s OK, Steve’s got the next book for his class.

He doesn’t really feel like reading, though, and not just because it’s one of those books where nothing happens. It’s not a bad book - it’s about a guy in Madrid, which he’d like to visit. But it’s just not the right time for it. He sits on the roof for a while and stares out at the sky as it starts to get dark, with red and pink streaks in the clouds. It’s nice. It’s nothing special.

It starts to spit with rain and the moon is hazy, half-covered by clouds. Steve’s about to call it a night and go in when Sam appears with some beer and a tin that Steve hopes has some cake in. One of his arms is wrapped in a long bandage, and he moves it very gently.

“Hey,” Steve says, alarmed. “What’s up?”

“Oh,” Sam says, and looks down at his arm, “This? One of the new birds doesn’t like me much. Some nasty claws on that one, let me tell you.” But he doesn’t sound amused. He looks up at the sky and blinks as the rain runs into his eyes. He doesn’t move to put down any of the things he’s carrying.

“Time to go inside,” Steve says, after a while.

They pass Bucky on the stairs, and he nods to them. Steve thinks about asking if he wants to join them for a drink, but by the time he turns around he’s already vanished out of sight.

 

***

 

He sits in Sam’s apartment and eats two slices of cake, and he thinks about everything he doesn’t normally let himself think about.

His eighteenth birthday. Bucky lighting the candles and saying it didn’t hurt when he burnt one of his fingers, and then kissing him when he was in the middle of blowing them all out. “My wishes are ruined now,” Steve had said.

The time he told a stranger where he worked and they said, “you’re a braver man than me.”

His mother, the fall after he moved in here, and then.

The blood he often has to mop up from the stairwell.

Bucky never wrote back.

Why does nobody he knows just have a normal job in an office or something?

Natasha’s never taken another evening class.

The night a few nights before he’d - before he said, “I don’t know if this is going to work out.” Bucky telling him about the sea. On the roof. Another building. Bird shit everywhere.

“I wish you were coming with me.”

 

 


	2. synchronised sinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go - this chapter is shorter than the first one, but i wanted to get something up this week, as i'm about to vanish to help run the comics track at a CONVENTION so i won't have much chance to write.
> 
> i suspect this will fanfic be longer than i first thought it would be.
> 
> thanks to everyone who's said nice things so far - i hope you're not disappointed by this chapter.

 

 

 

and i haven't seen you anywhere in ages  
knowing how you must be hating this

**\- the lucksmiths - _synchronised sinking_**

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve claps his hands together as Kate lights the candles on the cake, and looks around at the mixture of people on the roof. There’s the normal assortment of people who live here who have nothing better to do with their evenings - Clint, Sam, not Natasha because she’s away doing god-knows-what, Rebecca, Patsy, even Bucky - but also quite a lot of Kate’s friends, including the uncomfortable looking teenage boy who she’s about to take the cake over to.

“I don’t think he’ll want us there,” Steve had said, earlier, while they taped the banners up. “He doesn’t know us.”

“He doesn’t want _anyone_ there,” Kate had said.

But the kid had shown up, so he can’t have been too averse. And there aren’t that many people there, really. His friends are a couple of boys with white hair, a girl in an American flag-themed letterman jacket (a bit much, Steve thinks), and another boy with glasses that are so big that they’re practically goggles. The boy who’s birthday it is has got dark hair, slightly longer than he knows what to do with, and he keeps checking his phone, even when he’s been roped into conversation with some of his friends. He frowns at it.

Kate takes him the cake, and they all sing _Happy Birthday_ , and they stamp their feet and cheer as he blows out the candles. Then Kate snakes an arm round his shoulder and shoves a small gift into his hands.

“Kate,” the boy says, and turns it over.

“Cut the cake!” Clint calls, and Kate flips him off then turns around at a scrabbling noise from the fire escape. A tall, broad-chested blond man appears, or rather seems to crash down on the roof after leaping up from just above where the fire escape ends.

Clint’s the nearest, and all the amusement has drained from his face. He stands over the man, who’s winded, lying on his back - _he looks like a boy_ , really, Steve thinks, as he moves closer, wary - and he says, “who sent you?”

His foot is raised inches from the boy’s head, but he doesn’t move it any closer. The boy rolls his head back against the ground to see who’s talking, says, “ _shit_ ,” and then.

Kate says “TEDDY!” and thumps Clint in the side with her elbow, and Clint lowers his foot, but doesn’t smile. Kate puts out a hand and hauls the boy up, then reaches up to brush a clump of dirt out of his hair. Steve could have sworn he’d landed on - something - but there’s nothing else there, just a lot more grime.

Kate quickly draws back, but smiles at him.

“You could come in through the front door, next time,” Clint says, and then puts out a hand. Teddy looks at it for a second then shakes it, and he looks around, wildly.

“Sorry,” he says. He looks a bit like he’s going to throw up, but he swallows, and then takes a deep breath.

Kate’s friends are standing back, although the taller white-haired boy looks really fucking excited about the new arrival, and the boy whose birthday it is - Billy - resolutely stares down at his shoes. The boy with the glasses on has walked away.

Teenagers, Steve thinks, and he feels like he’s a million years old.

Teddy walks towards his friends, and they all take a step backward, except Billy, who doesn’t move.

“Happy birthday,” Teddy says, and then he winces.

“Uh, yeah,” Billy says. “Thanks.”

 _I knew this party was a terrible idea_ , Steve thinks, and he looks around for something else to do or somebody to talk to, but everybody else is both watching and pretending not to.

Except Clint, who’s at the edge of the roof by the fire escape, staring down.

“I thought about what my therapist said,” Teddy says. “I don’t think she was wrong.”

Nobody else is talking.

Billy raises a hand to his face, but Teddy stops him, and claps it between his hands instead.

“I did need to think,” he says. “But I haven’t changed my mind about you.”

He ducks down and curls his own hands into Billy’s hair and kisses him, and Billy presses a hand onto his chest and kisses him back, and Steve thinks, this is the worst thing that has ever happened, I want to die.

“DOES ANYBODY WANT TO PLAY SOME BEER PONG,” Sam shouts. “You’re not allowed,” he adds, when Kate looks at him hopefully.

“I’m 21,” Kate says. “I drink beer _all the time_.”

“That’s not why you’re not allowed,” Sam says, and he shoos her with his hand. “Go and dance, or tell your friends that it’s not polite to do that in public when there’s not even any music playing.”

“Noh’s got a boombox,” Kate says.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Well, he’d better put on something good.”

Kate salutes, and five minutes later they’re listening to a best-of compilation of the Beastie Boys while various young people scowl at and/or kiss each other. Steve and Patsy play beer pong against Sam and Clint, who win (obviously), and when the game’s over and Steve’s feeling a bit lightheaded, he looks up to see Kate and Bucky dancing together.

The girl in the letterman jacket is standing by the fire escape, but she’s looking up at the sky.

“I can’t believe he’s got us listening to a tape,” Sam says, and shakes his head. “He doesn’t remember what we went through.”

“I like tapes,” Steve says. He still has a shoebox in his room full of them, although he doesn’t listen to them so much anymore.

“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me,” Sam says. Steve scratches at his neck and tries not to watch Bucky and Kate. It’s a warm night. He’s glad they’re having fun.

“I miss tapes,” Patsy sighs. “It’s so much easier to skip tracks on a CD.”

Sam laughs, but Steve looks at Clint, who’s still on edge. “You OK?” Steve asks, although he knows he’s not.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint says. “I just. I thought he was someone else.”

Steve nods, although he doesn’t understand why that would be Clint’s instant reaction to anybody, and he finishes the last of his beer.

 

***

 

“Hey,” Steve says to Teddy, as he’s about to leave to go to bed. Noh’s trying to decide on the next tape to play and everyone stands around awkwardly. “Don’t ever try and get onto the roof from the fire escape again.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Teddy says, and rubs at his neck.

“No, I mean,” Steve says, “you could really hurt yourself, jumping like that this high up.”

Teddy looks at him, lips parted, as if he’s about to say something but can’t quite work out how to put it into words, and then Kate’s got a hand on his shoulder and she says “everybody else has danced with me, now it’s your turn,” and they’re off to the first strains of a song that Steve recognises but can’t name.

Steve hasn’t danced with Kate either, but he’s not hanging around for it. Bucky and Rebecca are talking to Clint in hushed voices, Sam and Patsy are arguing about their favourite Will Smith films (“I, Robot is way worse than Hitch,” Patsy had said, and Steve decided to leave the conversation), and Steve doesn’t even want to think about the rest of Kate’s friends. He has no idea why they’d want to come here to celebrate Billy’s birthday - Kate’s dad is a millionaire, he could have rented them out a nice club in Manhattan somewhere - but they seem to be enjoying it.

The air smells like ashes as he walks to his apartment, and the next day he reads in the morning paper that there was a fire a few blocks down, and he didn’t even notice.

 

***

 

When Steve goes out for a morning run a few days later, he gets back to see a big tag in black paint on the side of the building. It’s some kind of symbol, and he doesn’t understand what it means.

When he tells Clint about it, he rubs a hand down his face and sighs. “I ever tell you about the circus?” he asks.

Clint’s in his apartment, for once - Natasha’s still away - and Steve can see behind him a lot of boxes, and dirty clothes thrown on the floor. Steve thinks he probably woke him when he knocked - it’s still early, and he looks bleary and his hair is half sticking-up, half stuck-to-his-scalp. The curtains are drawn, and he shields his eyes from the light in the hallway with one of his hands.

“Circus?” Steve asks.

Clint tilts his head to one side, seems to think better of launching into a long story, and just says, “I worked in some for a while. Travelling, you know? You get to know what the tags mean.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks.

“Nothing I don’t already know,” Clint says, twenty minutes later, as he stands in front of the tag. He touches it and rubs with the tips of his fingers, but it’s dry. A bit rubs off on his hand anyway. He rubs his fingers and thumb together, but the paint stays.

“Coffee?” Steve asks, and leads him back into the building.

 

***

 

The thing is, Steve doesn’t really know what they all do.

Clint trains Kate, but she’s not always around, and he’s pretty sure he’s not getting paid for doing that. Then again, Clint’s incredibly wealthy, although Steve has no idea how he got the money in the first place - especially if he used to work in a travelling circus.

Natasha will spend weeks doing seemingly nothing and then jet off somewhere for a week, two weeks, or maybe even months at a time. Steve asked her what she did for a living, once, and she said, “I’m a consultant.”

Jessica’s a reporter, and Luke stays home with the baby, except for when he doesn’t. Steve has no idea what he did before that, or what he does when he goes away.

Patsy does some ad hoc work for her friend Jen’s law firm, but he doesn’t really know what that entails either, especially as Patsy once told him that reading legal documents is her least favourite thing to do in the world.

Sam works with birds of prey, training them for displays or filming.

Marc sleeps during the day, mostly.

Rebecca does something freelance. Maybe design.

 

***

 

Steve has no idea what Bucky does, either.

 

***

 

“Oh yeah,” Steve says, and gestures at Clint with his cup of coffee, “I remembered the name of the guy he wanted to deliver the fridge to.”

“Yeah?” Clint says.

 

***

 

The night of Billy’s birthday party, Steve had found it difficult to get to sleep, and in the end, he’d dug out the old box of tapes and put on a mix he’d made of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. He kept thinking about - well, about.

He’d written out the tracklisting in all-caps, and the paper was slightly brown now. The speakers crackled, and he brushed them with a hand, and specks of dust rose, lit up, then dispersed.

How old had he been when he’d made the tape? 15, maybe. He still knows all the words.

He falls asleep midway through the second side, and when he wakes up in the morning he realises that means he doesn’t even have to rewind it.

 

***

 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Barney, I think? Mean anything to you?”

Clint freezes, and then downs the last of his mug of coffee.

 

***

 

When Steve goes out for dinner that night, he sees a few guys and a van parked near the building. They’ve got a couple of baseball bats between them, and they’re drinking energy drinks from cans, which they crumple in their hands and throw onto the street once they’re done.

 _Hey, people live here_ , Steve wants to say, but he doesn’t.

When he comes back, he sees that they haven’t moved. They all look at him, unsmiling, but they still don’t move. Steve hunches his shoulders slightly, and closes the building’s front door firmly behind him.

 

***

 

“She’s just so... young,” Rebecca says, as she takes the skillet off the heat and then turns the stove off.

“She’s practically your age,” Sam says. “Anyway, I don’t think he’s interested.”

“Are you saying I’m not young?” Rebecca asks.

Steve rearranges the bottles of drink. She’d invited them over for dinner, and he’d said yes, but he wishes he was somewhere else. He wonders when Peggy'll be back from wherever it is that the UN sent her on some boring trip.

“What do you think, Steve?” Rebecca asks, as she starts to serve up.

“I think you’re all thinking about this too much,” Steve says.

Sam crosses his arms. “Oh, you suddenly don’t have an opinion?”

“Suddenly?” Steve asks.

Sam throws his hands up, and then Rebecca passes them each a plate.

 

***

 

After the meal, Steve says, “so I was talking to Clint the other day, and he was telling me about the circus -”

“What about the circus?” Sam asks, quickly. He’s got the bandage off his arm now, but he rubs at where some raised scratches are still visible. Must have been some bird.

“Well that’s the thing,” Steve says. “He ever told you he used to work for one?”  
  
Sam breathes out, heavily. “Yeah,” he says.

Steve looks at him. “What else is there to know about the circus?”

“Nothing,” Sam says. “They used animals, I can’t get behind that.”

“Aw, I used to love it,” Rebecca says. “We always used to go to see the circus when they were nearby. This was when I was away at school. Then one time, the lion-tamer stumbled, and the lion just mauled him. Blood everywhere. Gross. They stopped taking us, after that.”

Bucky lets himself into the apartment during this story, and says, “having nightmares again?”

Steve sits up a little straighter.

“Hey, I thought you were going to be in tonight,” Rebecca says. “I made too much paella.”

“Sorry,” Bucky says. “Got caught up at the gym.”

Rebecca pushes the pan towards him, and he gets a fork and starts to eat it without bothering to get a plate.

“Hey,” Rebecca says, but she doesn’t stop him.

“What’d you think of the party the other night?” Bucky asks, after he’s eaten half of what’s left.

“Teens,” Sam says, and shakes his head.

“Seemed to be pretty together, though,” Bucky says. “Knew his own mind.”

Steve doesn’t have to ask which of them Bucky’s talking about.

“He jumped onto the roof from the fire escape,” Rebecca says.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t stupid,” Bucky says.

“Steve warned him off pulling a stunt like that again,” Sam says. “He’s on the case.”

“Hey,” Steve says, and his voice feels hoarse, suddenly. “Just imagine if he’d fallen from that height.”

“He didn’t, though,” Bucky says, and he looks at Steve, unblinking, but Steve can’t bring himself to meet his gaze.

 

***

 

“I just think,” Steve had said, years ago, desperately, grabbing onto Bucky’s wrist, “just - look at me, Bucky, please.”

Bucky wrenched his arm away and wiped his eyes. “You just think,” he said.

He’d had his hair cut the day before, and it was so short. When Steve ran his fingers over it at the sides, it had felt both soft and sharp. It used to fall into his eyes, but now they were clear.

Steve wasn’t sure - he wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say, now. “You’re going away,” he said, finally, his voice breaking. “I thought - I thought you might not want -”

“This isn’t about _what I want_ ,” Bucky had said.

“I just thought - you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I don’t want - I don’t want to -”

“Is that really what you think of me,” Bucky said.

It had been muggy all day.

“I don’t -” Steve said. On the back foot again.

 

***

 

It some ways, it had probably made it easier.

 

***

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, as they do the washing up. His voice is hesitant, as if he doesn’t know how to speak. He never used to sound like that. “How’s - how’s your mother?”

“Oh,” Steve says, winded. That’s why. “Uh, she passed away a few years back.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, and blinks a few times, rapidly. “I’m really sorry, Steve.” He sounds strained. It’s funny to think, Steve thinks, that there was a time -

“Yeah,” Steve says. “It was a while ago now. Me too.”

Bucky doesn’t seem to know what to do with his body, and he fumbles with the glass he’s drying, but manages to stop it from falling.

Steve holds his hands in the suds for a while before he starts rinsing the plates off.

 

***

 

Is that really what Steve had said? If he’s honest, he can’t really remember. Maybe it went like this:

“I just think a clean break would be better for both of us,” Steve said, firmly.

Bucky opened his mouth and then closed it again, and he looked at the ground near his feet.

“How long have you been thinking about this,” he asked, and then he said, “actually, I don’t want to know.”

Or maybe it went more like this:

“I was wondering -” Steve said, “since you’re going to be so far away - do you - do you want -”

Bucky nodded, but he was still angry.

No, he’s pretty sure Bucky hadn’t agreed, but he was angry enough that it seemed, in the end, that he had.

He’d fought, but not in a way that managed to stop it from happening.

Steve might not remember the words, but he remembers his face.

 

***

 

And no, Bucky never replied to Steve’s letters or emails, but he didn’t send that many of them, and anyway, he’d been away at sea.

All of this, too, had probably made it easier.

 

***

 

“Is that really all you think of me,” Bucky had said.

Steve’s pretty sure that’s right.

“No,” he’d said, but he hadn’t really known, then, what he’d meant.

 

***

 

Peggy sends a postcard. Steve doesn’t recognise the postmark. _See you soon_ , she says. _It’s far too humid here. Like sleeping in a bath_.

 

***

 

“Clint,” Steve had said. “Clint, who’s Barney?”

“He’s my brother,” Clint said, and he ran a hand over his face. “I need more coffee for this.”

“He in trouble?” Steve asked, and Clint smiled at him. The bandage was off his nose by now, but you could tell it’d taken a bad hit.

“Steve,” Clint said. “Since before either of us could walk.”

“Seen him recently?”

Clint snorted. “He’s supposed to be dead,” he said, “so no, not really.”

 

***

 

“Hey,” Steve says, after they’ve done the washing up, and they’re listening to some of Rebecca’s music. “Any of you knew that Clint’s got a brother?”

Sam looks around, and says, “Steve, you might want to leave that alone.”

His voice is gentle.

Bucky looks at him, and Steve doesn’t recognise the expression on his face.

“I’ve heard,” Sam says, “he was involved in some pretty bad stuff.”

 

***

 

One morning later that week, Steve finds a couple of snapped arrows in the street. He picks them up and runs his thumb along one of them, and he draws a small amount of blood.

He puts them in his pocket, just in case Kate can salvage something from them, and he wonders what they were shooting at down here, and something heavy turns over in his stomach, and he thinks, maybe it’s time to think about it, maybe it’s time to think about it all.


	3. a neighbour sings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a warning that this one is going to have a bit more discussion about family illness/death (although nothing graphic).
> 
> thanks so much for reading!

 

A year went by, and yet another  
And not a word from you  
I remember when a day would be unusual

**the lucksmiths - the music next door**

 

 

 

 

 

Steve finds it hard to concentrate on his next class, and when everybody else gets up and starts to put their things away, he stays still for a few moments. He stares at the pencil in his hand with the half-chewed eraser on the end, and the book that he hadn’t managed to finish in time for the class (only 50 pages to go, but it was enough that the class had been almost useless, just a lot of people talking about something that he didn’t know how to start to understand.)

He runs his fingers over the book’s cover. It’s textured, and the letters on the front ( _NW_ ) are raised and shiny.

“You were very quiet today,” the class leader says. Steve looks up, and yes, she’s talking to him. He scrambles out of his seat and starts throwing his stuff into his backpack, remembering that he does actually need to leave now. Almost everybody else has gone, there’s just an older guy in a suit who’s doing his shoelaces up at the front of the room.

“Usually you have more to say,” she says. It’s true. He often likes to discuss the politics of the book, when they get to that, but today he’d just looked at the last page he’d got up to, unable to take it in, while other people had spoken instead.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “but it’s a good book.”

“I know,” she says, and smiles. “It’s my favourite on the syllabus.”

Steve nods. “Shame it came up this week,” he says. He can’t really elaborate, and he doesn’t want to actually say that he didn’t finish the book, but it seems like she knows already.

“Well,” she says, “you want to talk about it some more, let me know if you want to grab a coffee.”

Steve’s eyes widen a bit. “It’s okay,” she says, and she laughs. “ _Adult education_. We’re allowed to drink coffee. And talk. Not just about the book, if you don’t want to.”

She must be about his age. Grad student? She doesn’t have a _Dr_. before her name, and she goes by her first name, rather than a surname. _Cait_.

Steve rubs at his neck. “I do like coffee,” he says, and then he thinks, _why did I say that, everybody likes coffee_. “I mean,” he adds, and then he looks around and says, slightly lower, although there’s nobody else in the room at this point so there’s no actual need for him to lower his voice, “I’d like that.”

She looks at him, eyes sparkling. “Tell you what,” she says, and scribbles her number down on a piece of paper. “There’s a cafe on campus called Poor Yorick’s. I’m free Friday, 3pm?”

“I’ll make sure I’ve finished the book by then,” Steve says, and puts the paper in his pocket, then winces. He’s an idiot.

“I’m counting on it,” Cait says, and he smiles at her then leaves before he says anything else embarrassing.

 

***

 

“I can’t believe you’ve got a date with your teacher,” Sam says, and shakes his head.

“Okay,” Steve says. “First of all, it’s not a date. Second, she’s the _seminar leader_. Not a teacher.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Sam says.

“She’s nice,” Steve says. “Way more normal than all of you.”

“Is that so,” Sam says, but he doesn’t laugh. They’re on the roof, but nobody else is.

When Steve had got back home from class, he found a piece of paper pinned to the door of the building with another snapped-off arrowhead. The paper had just had a big _B_ written on it, in wobbly blue pen, and smears of dirt around the edges.

After a while, Steve says, “have you seen Kate around?”

“I think she’s squatting in Natasha’s,” Sam says, then smacks himself on the forehead, “no, sorry, she’s not _squatting_ , she’s _house-sitting_.”

 

***

 

Steve knocks on Natasha’s door later that night. Kate’s young, he thinks. She’ll be up.

She answers, slowly, with the door still on the chain. “Hey,” she says, but doesn’t move to let him in straight away. She’s still dressed, but her hair’s half-fallen out of its ponytail, and Steve couldn’t say for sure that he hadn’t woken her up. He feels like an asshole, but he needed to speak to her.

“Sorry if you’re busy,” Steve says. “But I found another arrowhead, pinned to the door of the building this time.”

He drops it into her hands, and then passes her the note. “It was pinning this down.”

She looks at the paper, then crumples it up and unhooks the door.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks, and then she makes them both big mugs of herbal tea.

 

***

 

“The thing is,” she says, slowly. “Clint’s a nightmare.”

“Uh,” Steve says.

“I mean,” she says, “total nightmare. Won’t tell us what’s going on. Won’t tell us what’s wrong.”

“He was telling me about his brother,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Kate says. “That’s the problem.”

Steve looks down at his tea. It’s dark pink. It tastes like flowers. He prefers coffee. Kate’s not really drinking hers, either.

“They think he’s back,” Kate says, and nods towards the window. Steve knows who she means. Them. The men with the vans, and the baseball bats, and sweatpants, and sneakers with the soles peeling off like skin peeling after it burns, except they can still run in them, and they don’t really care if they trip up as long as they land close enough to drag you down.

“He’s dead, though,” Steve says, but Kate shakes her head.

“Clint _thought_ he was dead,” she says. “Now, I don’t know what he thinks.”

“But he’s not seen him,” Steve says. Kate puts her hands in the air.

Steve had never thought too closely about how Clint came to own a rundown building in (an increasingly expensive part of) Brooklyn before, out of self-preservation rather than anything else. He knew he probably wouldn’t like the answer, whichever way it fell. But. Well, maybe there’s an answer in here. “This isn’t Clint’s first run-in with these guys, is it,” he says.

Kate flinches, but she meets his gaze. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think it might be. But they knew Barney.”

Steve sips the tea, and it’s too hot, and it’s unsatisfying.

“Clint doesn’t know I’m telling you any of this,” she says. “But I don’t think it’s his decision anymore.”

“Well, it’s good to know,” Steve says. He pauses, and then says. “Do you think it’s safe for us? Even with Jessica here?”

Kate looks confused. “Jessica?”  
  
“Jessica used to be a superhero,” Steve says. “I know she’s a journalist now, but she probably still remembers how to fight. Didn’t you know that? She told me when she moved in.”

Kate looks down at her hands. “I don’t - know,” she says. “A lot of us don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“You do,” Steve says.

Kate looks up, eyes bright. It was probably the wrong answer, but it’s true. “If you think I’d -”

Steve puts up a hand. “Well, that’s it,” he says. “We don’t leave.”

Kate looks uncomfortable. “It’s not going to come down to that,” she says.

 

***

 

Steve gets another postcard from Peggy the next day. He wishes he could call her; he wants to talk to someone who knows him better than they know Clint, or Kate, or any of them. He wants to know how he’s supposed to feel.

He wants to know if he should get out, or if he should stand with his friends. Where would he go? He’s lived here now for more than half a decade, and it was always weird but it was never _dangerous_ before. They took care of each other, mostly. He guesses that’s what Kate thinks they’ll keep on doing.

He wonders where Natasha is, too. At least with Peggy he knows what she does for a living. At least she writes. He wonders if Natasha knows what’s happening here, and if she thinks they can handle it without her.

 

***

 

Steve’s spraying Clint’s apartment for bugs when Rebecca knocks at the door. She’s got a scratch down one side of her face, but it’s not bleeding. “I’m out,” she says, to Clint. “One of Kate’s friends is here, keeping an eye.”

Clint nods, and she says, “come over for dinner later, both of you,” but Steve doesn’t know if he’ll be free. It’s midday; in a few hours, he’s meeting Cait for coffee. He’s going to leave once he’s done here.

He hates roaches. “What’s her friend keeping an eye on?” he asks.

Clint doesn’t say anything. The apartment smells disgusting. He’s sitting at his counter, in sweatpants and an unbuttoned shirt, staring at yesterday’s NYT crossword. “Easily tamed birds,” he says. “Six letters.”

“Wrong neighbour,” Steve says, and then he coughs from the fumes. “I’m out,” he says. “You should be, too.”

“I’ll go and check on her,” Clint says, and he walks out with Steve and heads up to the roof. He doesn’t bother doing his shirt up. Steve doesn’t say anything, or ask who _her_ is.

 

***

 

Sam texts him later. _MACAWS_.

 

***

 

The thing is, it totally is a date, and Steve wasn’t expecting it to be. He doesn’t. He hasn’t really. He’s not much of a guy for going on _dates_ , and hasn’t been for a long time.

She looks at him, openly, and smiles, and he isn’t sure how to respond, but he tries. He smiles back, although it feels weird, and he’s worried she’s going to suddenly tell that he’s being fake, and then she’ll leave.

It’s not that he’s not happy to be here, or that he doesn’t want to smile, but he’s sure most people don’t think this much about what they do with their face - right?

She asks about his job and where he lives (“it’s kinda weird,” Steve says), and she laughs when he talks about the book (which he stayed up late the night before to finish), and she smiles at him when he asks if she wants another coffee.

“Decaf mocha this time,” she says, “or I’ll never sleep.”

Steve gets that, and a latte for himself. He stops himself from eating the foam, but manages to get it all over his face instead when he laughs at something she says about the next book on the syllabus. _Smooth_ , he thinks, the voice inside his head an octave higher than usual. He wipes his upper lip.

“So, how about you?” Steve asks. “Are you a grad student?”

It turns out she’s not, although she got her masters at a small private college in Vermont last year, and she’s working part-time at the community college while she lives with her great-aunt, who needs a live-in carer. “I’m hoping to start my PhD in a year or two,” she says, “but we’ll see. I was really pleased to get the work. I like teaching the class a lot.”

“I can see that,” Steve says. She’s very good at leading discussion, and she clearly likes all of the books, and doesn’t act like she’s just shackled with somebody else’s syllabus.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and tries to think about something to say that won’t remind her that she _is_ technically his teacher.

“So, you’re still working towards your first degree?” she asks, and Steve leans back and sighs.

“Kinda,” he says. “Dropped out of college midway through to look after my mom. She was, uh, dying. Took a while off, but I’ve started taking evening classes. Have enough credits for a degree now, but I like the classes. Gives me something to do.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and then doesn’t say anything else for a moment. “It’s - a hard time.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, it was. How’re you holding up?”

“Well, she’s not too bad,” she says. “She’s not terminal.”

“Ah,” Steve says. He wishes they were talking about the class again. He doesn’t say anything for a while, but then Cait buys a slice of pie and insists that he share it with her. It’s nice and cold, and it’s a hot summer day outside, and the fruit is too sweet, and sour, but that’s okay. His mouth puckers inwards. The ice cream on the side melts almost as quickly as they can eat it.

It’s raining outside when they leave, but not much, and it’s sunny and hot still, so when they walk towards the subway station together Steve doesn’t mind so much that his hair’s getting wet, he just pushes it out of his face with one hand and smiles as Cait gets out her Metrocard.

“We should do this again,” Cait says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and by the time he’s home he’s totally forgotten about Rebecca’s invitation to dinner, and he goes straight to his apartment and eats leftover refried beans and salsa, and he doesn’t see anybody else all night.

 

***

 

For a long time, Steve didn’t let himself think back to how his relationship with Bucky had started, the awkward conversations, their first kiss, their first other things. To begin with, it was because it was too precious, too happy, too... much to really think about that often. And then, after, it was too painful, then too silly, and it was time to move on.

This means that he can’t really remember it, now. He feels like a different person, with a different set of memories, although there’s the ghost of it somewhere - Bucky showing him how to hold chopsticks so that the rice didn’t fall off, Bucky buying a bottle of wine on his eighteenth birthday and not getting carded even though there was no way he looked 21, Bucky brushing his hair out of his eyes, and Bucky saying, he’s sure he remembers this at least - “but I don’t care about them, Steve.”

And then he stops trying to remember any specific moment and he just thinks about Bucky, back then - smaller, neater hair, at ease in his body in a way that Steve could never imagine - and then he tries to remember how easy it had been just to talk to him, and he thinks about how he’d held his face earlier when talking to Cait, and the other feelings all go, and he’s just sad.

 

***

 

Kate texts him a photo of a man who looks a bit like Clint, but with coppery hair and an even more broken nose.

            tell us if you see him

            but he might not look much like this anymore

Steve looks for him every time he leaves the building after that, but he thinks, _this is what everybody else is doing, too_.

 

***

 

Everybody that Steve’s known who’s died has really died. He’s gone to the funerals, worn black, kissed his mother’s cheek. He can’t - he doesn’t. It’s not something he understands.

 

***

 

Cait texts him before class and says:

            it’s your turn to buy the pie this time

Steve replies:

            I’ve done the reading this week!

Cait replies:

            well, you can tell me about it over coffee on Friday anyway

 

***

 

“Well, he might be dead,” Kate says. She’s got a quiver on her back, and bandages wrapped around one hand, but Steve can’t see a bow. He’s spraying Natasha’s apartment for bugs today, and Kate’s about to head off to the range, which is somewhere nearby but Steve’s never been there.

“Sure,” Steve says.

“But as far as I can tell, nothing was ever officially declared,” Kate says. “Can you believe that? Clint says he never looked into it. Why!”

Steve thinks of what Sam said to him, when he first started asking questions.

“Sometimes it’s best not to ask,” he says.

Kate snorts. “Not you too,” she says.

 

***

 

All of the streets that Steve walks are full of other men, and he can’t stop looking, even though he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t know him, even if he saw him.

They ignore him, even the men in tracksuits. They seem more restless - they’re not out front as often as they had been, but when they are, they’re loud, aggressive towards each other, and they’ve given up all pretence that they’re there for any reason other than to stake the building out, and keep an eye out for the man they’ve heard is back.

They spit on the sidewalk, and they’re mean to their dogs, and Steve thinks, _you’re the worst part of this_. They’re not even in charge, they’re not even doing anything. But he feels like they’ll never really be gone.

 

***

 

Steve tells Cait a very abbreviated version of the story over coffee. She says, “have you tried calling the authorities?” and Steve laughs.

 

***

 

“But what do you think?” Sam asks Clint. They’re in Sam’s apartment, playing a new board game that Sam had bought a few days before, but they’ve just finished one round and can’t decide if they want to bother with another one.

They hadn’t been talking about it, but they all know what he means. His tone of voice. Sam doesn’t bring things up lightly. He looks up at Clint, unwavering. Clint’s spent too long not answering, and if this is how you lure him in - with games and trivia quizzes and good beer - then Sam will do it.

“I think he’s alive,” Clint says. “What? Think they’d do all this if they weren’t sure?”

Sam nods, and says, “well, we’re all here. Even Steve.”

Rebecca shuffles the deck, and says, “Bucky’s out with Kate tonight, so let’s have one more round and then I’m going to go and sleep in peace.”

 

***

 

There’s a postcard on Clint’s fridge. It just says, in block caps:

_BEERWURST_

“Natasha?” Steve asks. It’s Saturday morning, and a big package came for Clint that he’s had to carry up. “You know what this is?”

“I think so,” Clint says, and he shakes the box a bit. Steve winces, but Clint then opens the box up.

“Look,” he says, “trick arrows!”

Steve looks at the assorted arrowheads in various different colours, and he says, “Clint, what are you doing?”

Clint holds one up and says, “it’s, uh. Boomerang arrow.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Steve says. “You’re on some kinda list somewhere for ordering these.”  
  
“Uh, I have a friend,” Clint says, and doesn’t meet his eye.

 

***

 

“I’m the only normal one in the building,” Steve says, the next time he’s getting coffee with Cait. It was a joke, once, but he doesn’t laugh. He thinks about asking if she wants to get dinner next time, but he doesn’t. He’s not sure he’s there yet.

“Sounds like a pretty weird building,” Cait says. “Like you’re still living in dorms.”

“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” Steve says, and smiles fondly as he thinks back to the few months he spent as an RA. “They all think they know what they’re doing, but then they wake you up at 5am because they poured fat down the sink and tried to wash it down and now their whole apartment’s flooded. At least students just go out and buy pizza in the first place.”

Cait shakes her head. “You never met my roommate, freshman year,” she says.

 

***

 

When Steve’s mom died, he’d gone through her things, and he’d found a bundle of letters between her and his father, who he’d never known. He’d read a few of them, but it felt wrong, and so they’re in a shoebox under his bed somewhere with her jewellery and one of her gloves. It wasn’t fancy, or special - just a normal woollen glove, with a slight hole in the palm. But she’d lost the other one, and this one had ended up on her windowsill for months, he saw it every time he came into the room, so he could never bring himself to throw it away.

Steve never remembers to buy gloves in winter, and he doesn’t really have any letters either. He’s got Peggy’s postcards, which he ends up putting inside his books, and the odd note left by his mom which he’s put in the shoebox along with her other things. And in winter, his hands turn pink, and his skin cracks.

The first time he’d met Sam, a few months after he’d moved in (Sam didn’t move in himself for another year or so after that), Sam had said to him, “what do you like to do?” and Steve hadn’t known how to answer him. He’d been - what? 22?

“I guess I don’t know what to do with myself,” he’d said. “By myself.”

“You’ve got friends?” Sam had said.

“I guess,” Steve had said. He had some friends, but most of them he’d forgotten how to talk to, and they were all still scattered across the country (and further afield), doing their degrees, starting jobs, too difficult to talk to in texts, and it was too exhausting to write emails on his laptop where half the keys were sticky or broken. “It’s not the same.”

“Well,” Sam said, “I’ll keep racing you round the block if it’ll make you feel any better.”

Sam apparently knew Clint through working with the birds. He can’t really reconcile that with Clint as he is now, but then, everybody discards hobbies and things they used to enjoy. He hasn’t painted since that class he took the summer his mom died. He hasn’t really dated since before then, although maybe he’s picking it up again.

He has a handful of notebooks, all of which he intended to take notes for his classes in, but by the end they’re all just full of sketches. He knows this going in, he supposes. It’s why he always buys them with plain pages, he hates when they come full of ruled lines. It’s why he has more pencils than pens.

He sits by the window on Sunday morning and draws what he can see, and then he draws people he knows, and then he draws his own hands, and his bitten thumbnails, and somebody else on the other side of the table who isn’t there now, but who might be there soon.

 

***

 

He gets a text that afternoon from Rebecca:

            Guys. I think I saw him.


	4. self-preservation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an extra warning: this chapter gets pretty violent towards the end (although only on a level with something like CATWS)

  

and, yeah, we're a mess  
but let me just stress  
that we're both at our best in a tight spot  
and whatever comes next  
if we leave the nest  
don't settle for less than what we've got

**the lucksmiths, _self-preservation_**

\---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What do you mean, you think you saw him?” Clint demands, but not with any heat to his voice, just... urgency. He’s peeling the label off his bottle of beer. It’s dark outside, and getting colder, but Rebecca only just made it back.

She looks exhausted.

“I - I was a few blocks over, and I looked up, and - I saw a guy who looked like the photo,” she says. “I tried to tail him, but he disappeared.”

Clint presses the bottle to his face.

Steve and Sam look at each other, and silently say, when we’re done with this game, we’re going in. They’re playing rummy, which Steve is always worse at than he remembers.

“I don’t know it was him,” Rebecca says. “But - his nose. And, he looked like you, I guess.”

Steve and Sam had only stayed out with Clint because they didn’t want to leave him alone, waiting for Rebecca. He was restless, inscrutable. She was in a meeting late, with a client. “You could just call her,” Sam had said. “She’d call you back as soon as she’s free.”

“I told her to come and see me on the roof when she gets in,” Clint said. “I like the roof.”

Sam had rolled his eyes, but he’d taken Clint some beer and stew anyway, and got Steve to come up to play cards a bit later on.

“Where?” Clint asks, and Rebecca gets her phone out to show him on google maps. Clint squints at it. He doesn’t like smartphones. Or rather, he doesn’t trust them.

“Hair’s long, the elbows of his jacket were scratched out,” Rebecca says.

Clint nods, and passes the phone back over. “Sounds likely,” he says. “He never likes throwing things out.”

Sam wins the game. Steve stands up, and says, “Well, I’m beat.”

Sam snorts.

 

***

 

Steve meets up for coffee with Cait a couple of times this week - Peggy’s not back yet, and he likes getting out of the building, out of Brooklyn, and she always seems happy to meet up. It must be nice for her to get out too, he thinks.

It’s still just coffee, but Steve likes it. They’re... he’s not sure if he’d call them dates outside of his own head, but they’re _something_.

“How’s the building?” she asks him, as she cuts her slice of cake in two and passes him half. “Any more wild goings on?”  
  
“Not really,” he says.

“Come on,” she says, and kicks at him under the table. “I’ve had the most boring week, I cannot even begin to tell you. Tell me a story. Something fun.”

 

***

 

Steve was so ill for most of ninth grade that he had to do it over, which is how he came to graduate from high school the year he turned nineteen. He’d been sick a lot as a kid, and is still kind of surprised that he’s mostly healthy as an adult. But that was the worst of it, the apex. That whole year is a haze of lying in bed with the sheets pulled in tight, doctor’s appointments, surgery, and his friends slowly not calling him up like they had before.

But doing the year over was also how he came to meet Bucky. He’d known a lot of the kids in his new classes from middle school, but none well, and they’d either ignored him, half-heartedly bullied him in such an inept way that he hadn’t really noticed, or palled up to him when they wanted to copy his work and then gone back to ignoring him when class was over. He’d sat on his own for lunch for the first week or two, because his friends in the tenth grade had a different lunch period. But then... well, then he wasn’t alone anymore.

Bucky was new to the school, and they sat next to each other in Chemistry and English, which was enough - enough for two boys who didn’t really have anyone else, who had a handful of interests in common (baseball, Lord of the Rings, Buffy). Halfway through the year, it was like they’d never not known each other - they’d be at each other’s apartments after school, playing on Bucky’s Dreamcast, or reading books, or Steve would be drawing while Bucky helped Steve’s mom cook. When he was 15, Bucky wanted to be a cook when he was older - he’d started looking into culinary school, and everything. But then he moved on.

“I’ve never been further than, like, North Carolina,” Bucky told Steve once, maybe a couple of years after they’d first met. Bucky’s family had only moved to Brooklyn from Queens - but it still seemed far to Steve, who’d barely been out of the city. “I want to travel, you know?”

Steve may have been meant to be a grade above Bucky, but there was only a few months in it, age-wise, and Steve suddenly felt very young. He’d never really thought about it, at all. He didn’t know where the furthest he’d been was. His mother didn’t have a car, and it’s not like they had much family to visit. DC, maybe? They’d gone there on a school trip once.

“One summer, after we’re done with school, let’s drive to the west coast,” Bucky said. “We can go surfing!”  
  
“Yeah,” Steve said, “and I’ll drown.” He was still small, then, although not as small as he had been. He was seventeen, maybe.

“Come on,” Bucky said. “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”  
  
Bucky had grainy photos from the internet with weird, wrong colours (courtesy of the printer in his dad’s office) stuck all over the walls in his bedroom. They were of places that Steve didn’t recognise and hadn’t heard of, so maybe he should have seen it coming. Bucky’s sister was at boarding school upstate, paid for by their aunt, who was rich. Steve had once asked Bucky if he was sad that he wasn’t at boarding school, and he’d said no, and that they’d asked him about it, but he’d said he didn’t want to be sent away. So Steve figured he was happy living here, in New York. Like Steve was.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, but really he meant, _I like it here, and I don’t know anywhere else._

“I want to go to Japan,” Bucky said.

“What, so you can get all the videogames early?” Steve asked.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky said, aghast. “It’s beautiful there.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. His stomach turned over as he looked over at Bucky, who was staring at the photos on his wall. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

 

***

 

Peggy had joined their school junior year - she was English, but her father, who was an interpreter of some kind, had taken a position at the UN, and here she was. She seemed amused and charmed by everything that was different. Which was lucky, really.

“Your chocolate is disgusting,” was the first thing she said to Steve, as she sat down opposite him at the lunch table. She smiled at him.

“Uh,” Steve said, his brain short-circuiting.

“It’s not like we make it,” Bucky said, because he was there too, of course. Peggy was in their History class, but had only started at their school at the start of that week.

She smiled at them both, and then said, “I’m afraid I’m going to be a total bore and ask if either of you have notes from the rest of the year that I can copy. I want to catch up. We were studying the Reformation at home, it was much less... violent.”

Steve had said, “Well, it depends what kind of violence you’re talking about,” and Bucky had thrown his hands in the air, and soon, and soon, all three of them were friends.

“Why didn’t they send you to private school?” Steve asked her, later on. He was constantly surprised to find that the people he knew best had ever been thrown into his path - it would have been so easy for them to have never met, at all.

“Ah,” she said. “Great believers in comprehensive education, my parents.”

Steve blinked.

 

***

 

Steve and Peggy spent much of senior year applying to various colleges - Peggy was mostly just applying to universities back in the UK, actually, but a couple of the Ivies too. Steve applied to colleges in-state, only.

Bucky mostly didn’t seem to have a clue about what he wanted to do after he graduated from high school.

“The thing about college,” Bucky said to Steve, “the thing is - it’s another four years stuck in one place. And - I don’t know, I don’t want to just... I don’t want to decide now on something like that, you know?”  
  
By this point, culinary school was forgotten.

“You don’t have to decide,” Steve said, and took his hand between both of his. “Loads of people go back to school when they’re older than that anyway, so it’s - it’s not like -”

Bucky smiled at him, and softly pressed his free hand to Steve’s cheek, his thumb resting half an inch away from Steve’s mouth. “I know you know that, dummy,” he said. “You try telling everyone else.”

 

***

 

It was a sticky spring day, senior year, when the Navy sent a handful of people into their high school for a recruiting drive. Steve and Bucky had had a stupid argument about Angel vs Spike the night before, which hadn’t been a serious argument but had kind of felt like one, and somebody at lunch had made a joke about Peggy being Steve’s girlfriend, and neither Steve or Bucky had corrected them.

The recruitment video showed the open sea. One of the marines started to list the places he’d visited on his tours of duty. Peggy was sitting between Steve and Bucky, and Steve looked over at Bucky, who didn’t look back at him. His eyes were kind of wide. Peggy nudged Steve in the side, and he looked forward again at the man in the beret, who was still talking.

 

***

 

“Look,” Peggy had said to him. “There’s no point in you tying yourself in knots over it. Just talk to him. He’s your best friend, too.”

“I know, I know,” Steve had said, but, Steve thinks now that he hadn’t. He really hadn’t understood what that meant.

And that was the biggest problem, that was at the root of it.

 

***

 

Peggy had gone to Oxford in the end (German and Russian, and she’d kept up various other languages on the side), but then she’d moved back to the states for grad school - Cornell.

“It’s New York,” she’d said to Steve, on the phone.

“Yeah,” he’d said. “ _State_.”

“I’ll see you more often than I do now.”

He was pretty sure that Peggy had had no idea how big this country was until she’d moved to Ithaca.

 

***

 

“So what’s it all for?” Steve asked her, once. “Interpreter, like your dad?”

“Oh no,” she said. “I have no intention of spending my whole life translating other people’s words.”

 

***

 

Peggy had always been so sure of what she wanted, and Bucky had, too, in his own way. Steve had never - Steve has never been sure.

He guesses, that in the end, it doesn’t really matter - in the end he’d have given up whatever he was doing to look after his mom, and then he’d have either fallen into this entire life by total accident - like he did - or he wouldn’t have, in which case... Steve has no fucking idea what he’d be doing with his time. Teaching self-defence classes and whatever else the community centre wanted him to do and living in a gross studio apartment somewhere, probably.

 

***

 

“Come on, Steve,” Cait says, kicking him under the table again. “It’s like you vanished into your head. I’m still waiting for you to tell me something funny.”

Steve shakes his head, and smiles at her, and tells her about Billy and Teddy. He leaves out the part where Clint looked like he wanted to stamp on Teddy’s head until Kate saved the day. He leaves out the part where the story makes him sad, and plays up all of the disgusting teenage melodrama that seems so remote from him now. _Their names basically rhyme._

“Teenagers,” Cait sighs. “Okay, that’s acceptable. I’m going to tell you my story now.”

Cait tells him a very long but funny story about one of the professors at the school that she got her MA from and the various times she brought her pets along to class, and then sits back, and looks him over. “You need to have more fun,” she says. “You’re getting a little wrinkle here.” She leans forward and presses her index finger and middle finger between Steve’s eyes. He looks at her. She doesn’t move her hand.

“My ex-boyfriend moved into my building,” Steve blurts out. He doesn’t know why he says it. He hasn’t talked about it in those terms to anybody - except Peggy, who already knows, who was there for the whole thing. Well, most of it. Cait is still sitting very close to him.

“Oh?” Cait says. “That doesn’t sound very fun.”

“No,” Steve says. He looks down at her. “No, I guess it isn’t.”

She takes her hand away, and smiles at him. “Well, I guess you’ll have to have more fun with me, to make up for it,” she says.

 

***

 

Steve is still thinking about Cait, and rubbing the skin between his eyes with his thumb, as he gets back to the building, and so it takes him a few moments to realise that something is up with the guys in the tracksuits. They’re yelping, and laughing, and calling to each other in Russian, and looking down at... looking down at something that’s going on at their feet, but Steve can’t see exactly what, because his view is blocked by a couple of cars.

Steve slowly walks backwards, onto the other side of the street, and now he can see. There’s a guy - they’ve got a guy on the ground, who doesn’t seem to be moving. He’s got a black eye. And - and he’s got - coppery hair, but it’s dirty. There’s blood. There are a lot of them. Steve is on his own. But they’ve got baseball bats, and he’s sure they’ve got guns, and there’s no time to call Clint, but Steve presses dial on his phone anyway, fingers slipping, only wasting a few seconds - but they notice him.

“Hey,” one of them calls to him, and starts to walk up to him, hulking his shoulders. They recognise him. Another guy, this one in a beanie with the word BABY written on it, cracks his arm, a baseball bat in his hand. “Hey, _bro_.”

And then baseball bat guy raises it up, and the guy on his back squirms, but can’t seem to get up or get away, and Steve doesn’t have time to make the call. He runs at the men, phone in his hand, a fist formed around it, and pushes them away as best he can. He’s got surprise on his side, and he’s a big guy, but he hasn’t practiced his self-defence in a while. They come at him and he ducks and punches and takes a couple of them out, but there are too many of them. He takes a hit from the bat, and he goes down, next to - he’s sure of this, as sure as Rebecca wasn’t sure - Barney. The world turns too fast. Or - it’s like the world is tuned between channels. He looks up and tries to get up, and then there’s a gun in his face.

“Surrounded, bro,” the guy with the gun says. This one has a balaclava pulled over his face (unlike the lackey at his side who’s nursing a nosebleed).

“You know what they want?” Steve says, looking sideways at Barney, who does at least still seem to be conscious, even if his leg looks pretty _fucked_. “Now might be the time...”

Barney smiles at Steve, sidelong, and then spits at the guy in front of them. “Sorry pal,” he says, in a tone that Steve guesses is meant to be apologetic. He’s talking to Steve, not the balaclava guy.

The guy blinks, and spits back at Barney. “Fuck you, bro,” he says, pissed. He lifts his gun up for a second, takes the safety off, and then points it back at Steve’s face.

“Wow, thanks,” Steve says. “That made things a whole lot better for me.”

Or at least, Steve thinks that’s what he’s saying. He can taste blood in his mouth, and although he’s pretty sure the fight hasn’t broken or ruptured anything serious, he can’t necessarily feel everything right now, and everything - everything is wrong. He’s never - nobody has ever pointed a gun at him before. It’s too close. What if - what if the guy doesn’t even mean to shoot him and it happens anyway? What if the gun just goes off? What if he dies and it doesn’t mean anything?

Steve thinks, aren’t you meant to have super profound thoughts just before you die.

And then the guy in front of him is knocked over, and the gun flies out of his hand and hits the sidewalk, and there’s a gunshot but it doesn’t hit Steve, because the gun’s gone, it’s been kicked away, and then there’s another shot and - somebody cracks Barney in the face, and he’s out, but then that guy is pulled away. At least it’s not a - at least there wasn’t a gun, Steve thinks. At least - at least they got rid of the gun. And he crawls forward, and he checks that Barney’s breathing. He is. His pulse, Steve thinks, next you check the, but he can’t - he can’t tell if it’s his pulse in his own fingers, or if it’s Barney’s. But he’s - Barney’s breathing. And. Steve is too. And then he looks up, and around, and he thinks, _oh_.

“Steve,” Bucky says, urgently. He’s on his knees, in front of them both. “Steve, are you okay?”

He presses one of his hands to Steve’s face, and Steve is aware that he’s wiping away some blood.

“I think,” Steve says. “But Barney -”

“I know,” Bucky says. “I know. Everyone’s on their way.”

“I saw him,” Steve says, “And there wasn’t - there wasn’t time -”

“I know,” Bucky says. He doesn’t move his hand from Steve’s face, but he uses his other one to check Barney’s pulse. He doesn’t move him. He looks back up at Steve, and Steve notices that his arm, the arm he used to check Barney’s pulse - his prosthetic, it’s made of metal. And Steve thinks - Steve thinks, he doesn’t understand how Bucky did that. There were a lot of men here, he thinks.

And then Clint arrives, and Kate, and Rebecca, and Jessica, and _Marc_ , who’s still in his fucking pyjamas, and - and then - and then Steve swears he sees a woman in scrubs step out of thin air, step out of, she wasn’t there and then - and then she was - and that’s when his brain says, no, that is enough, and he closes his eyes, and Bucky says, “Steve, Steve, are you still with me?” and Steve grips onto Bucky’s arm.

“Bucky,” Steve says, his eyes still closed, and he can feel Bucky’s hands on him, but it doesn’t feel real, and. And. It’s starting to hurt. “ _Bucky_. I think I’m ready to see a doctor now.”


	5. peach, plum, pear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this deals with the aftermath of some canon-typical violence.
> 
> sorry this has been so long. i'm having to teach myself to try and write it again. hope it's not too much of a let down, and thanks for all of your wonderful comments on the previous chapters.

now it's done  
watch it go  
you've changed some  
\---

**joanna newsom - peach plum pear**

  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve blinks out for maybe half a minute at most as Bucky hauls him up, and he comes to, still blinking, with one arm around Bucky’s shoulders and another around Kate’s. He looks up and sees Kate’s friend - Billy - pull a ludicrous red cape around himself. _This is fine_ , he thinks, hysterically.

“Steve?” Kate’s saying. “Steve, are you with us?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He looks down at himself. The world is not moving at the pace he’d expect it to. It’s like an eternity inside his head takes up the tiniest microsecond in actual time. Everything is very big, like he’s looking through a bent mirror. The sky blooms, an overexposed photograph. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I think it’s shock,” Bucky says. “He’s taken some damage - but I think--”

Steve stops listening, and doesn’t really become aware of himself again until some time later, when he realises he’s under a blanket in - is this Luke and Jessica’s apartment? And why do they have a reclining leather chair, anyway? He gingerly moves, but only his legs hurt. The man - with the bat  - he took the bat to his legs, his remembers. He moves to roll up his jeans.

“Don’t do that,” Sam says. “Trust me.” He’s sitting on a kitchen chair a few feet away. Steve makes himself look around, but he can’t see anybody else nearby. Can hear voices, though.

“Uh,” Steve says. “I want to see --”

“Claire'll see to it when she’s done with Barney,” Sam says. He jerks his head towards the bedroom. “They’ve got him laid out in there.”

“Who...?” Steve says. “I don’t...”

Sam smiles, but it’s not his real smile. “Nobody really does, Steve,” he says, and then scrubs forcefully at his head and sighs.

Neither of them says anything for a minute. Steve thinks about saying, “ow,” or, “I don’t think I’m bleeding, but thanks for checking,” or “can I have some painkillers, please,” but before he opens his mouth, Sam talks again.

“They found Barney,” he says. “Or, I dunno. Maybe Barney found them.”  
  
“Why would he do that,” Steve says.

Sam shrugs. Steve thinks, well, he’s related to Clint, and as he thinks that, Clint and Bucky and - Steve guesses she must be Faiza - walk out of the bedroom.

Kate walks in from outside at about the same time, with a 12-pack of beer, and says, “I know it’s not very late, but.” Billy is with her. He’s wearing gloves, and he keeps looking down at them. Kate puts the beer down.

“So," Claire says. "He's come round, which is good. You dealt with concussions before?"

Clint nods. "Mostly my own," he says, hoarse. "But I know what to do."

"I've strapped his nose," she says. "His face is going to look like a bit of a horror show for a while. And his leg..."

Steve got there after they did whatever they did to his leg. He swallows and thinks about it. Blood. Had he been shot? Or was it. The bat. There were. Gunshots. But he mostly only remembers the one. Seconds. Steve closes his eyes for a second and thinks again about the gun.

Sam grabs his hand, and says, “hey!” Steve opens his eyes again and smiles, slightly.

Clint rubs a hand over his face and says to Claire, “thank you.” Steve didn't catch the last of it. But. Nobody's crying.

“I could --” Billy says. He swallows. “If there’s anything bad I could try something.”

Clint opens his mouth, but Claire gets there first. “No,” she says. Mixing magic with medicine is not a good idea."

“What do you know about it?” Bucky says. 

“I work in a hospital in New York, James,” she says. “Please. I have seen everything."

“Magic,” Clint says. He sounds like he’s trying his best to sound normal, but he sounds terrible. It's like he’s very far away.

“Let's not get into that," she says. "I just need you to watch over your brother. No magic involved." 

Billy looks down at his feet.

“I wonder if Peggy knows that magic's real,” Steve says to Sam. Except he can’t remember deciding to say the words. It’s as close as he’s come to an out of body experience, and it’s -- he said it to the wrong person. He never goes -- he wants to talk to Peggy. But -- right now. Bucky would have been -- Bucky knows Peggy better --

Sam squeezes his hand. No, Sam's fine.

At his voice, Claire looks over at him. “Oh good,” she says. “You’re still doing okay. Can I take a look at your legs?”

Sam gets up and she sits in his chair, and scoots it closer to Steve. She takes hold of his legs, one by one, and rolls his jeans up very, very gently. “You walked up here?" she says, and Sam nods. "I don't think they're broken,” she says. “Bad bruising, though -- but --” she puts her hands in the air, slightly helpless. "I'm not a doctor, and I don't have an x-ray machine here. I can't swear that you don't have a small fracture. You have insurance?"

“Uh,” Steve says.

"Yeah, he does," Sam says.

“Thank you.” Time still isn’t working properly, but he’s glad he can stand. He stretches his legs out. The bruises are still rising to the surface. But -- he's had a break before and it didn't feel like this. The pain isn't sharp. "I don't think," he says, and stops.

"Anywhere else that hurts? Anyone see where they hit him?"

"We got there after," Bucky says, from only a few. Feet. Steve almost -- out of his skin. Forgot he was there. "But there was a bit of blood on his face."

"There's a graze here," she says. She presses a hand to Steve's face, very gently. "Looks nasty, but it's stopped bleeding on its own." She sticks a band-aid on it, and Steve feels like there's a bubble inside of him, rising, hysterically, and he breathes deeply. She checks his eyes, although Steve's pretty sure he didn't take any bad hits to his head. He's panicking, not concussed. "I think he's in mild shock," she says to Sam, "and his legs are going to hurt for a while, but otherwise --"

Kate hands him a beer. Steve pops the can open and stares at it, at the inside of the can, which is dark and full of bubbles that are breaking into the air and making it taste different, bitter, like beer, enough to choke on if he holds it too close to his nose for too long, and then he takes a sip. Claire says, "that'll probably make you feel like shit, you know," but doesn't stop him. Steve looks up, and Bucky’s looking right at him. Bucky doesn’t look away, but Steve does.

When Steve looks back, Bucky’s not looking at him anymore.

  


***

  
  


After Steve’s finishes the beer and turns down a second one in favour of coffee, he thinks. _Nobody’s told me anything_. “Who’s Claire?” he asks Sam, because Sam’s still there. Claire's back with Barney, he thinks, or maybe -- somewhere else? Not here.

“She’s a nurse,” Sam says.

"Nurse," Steve says.

 

“She’s a superhero,” Jessica says. It is her apartment. She’s brewing the coffee. Luke is back too, and he’s playing peekaboo - very loudly, somehow - with their baby on the couch. “Well, basically. She puts up with us. Put a splint on Clint's brother's leg. Came with Billy when he turned up at the hospital..."  
  
Steve blinks. Billy? Is he how? It's all still a bit of a jumble. But: magic, and Claire stepping out of mid-air. “I don’t really read the cape pages,” he says. "I didn't know."

“I know,” Jessica says. “Pity. Some of the best headlines in there.”

Kate is arguing with Clint in the bedroom -- or, well, yelling at him -- which doesn’t seem like a great idea to Steve, especially as Barney’s still in there. He'e on his feet, gingerly stretching his legs, and he creaks over to see that Claire's still sitting with Barney, who is at least awake now, although he looks kind of... crumpled. They’re pointedly not looking at Kate and Clint.

“-- be there for you, but how can we! You tell us half the story and then, what, you just expect us to fight for you? Steve could have died!”

Steve puts a hand up and says, “Hey.” He’s still alive. Not that hardly anybody seems to have noticed.

Clint ignores him. “If I’d told you all everything it could have been worse,” he says. He scrapes his fingers on the bottom of his chin. His stubble’s so thick that it’s almost a beard now. It’s slightly darker than the hair on his head.

“How could it have been worse?”

“Think about why you don’t tell your family what you’re up to.”

“This is different,” Kate says. “I know you.”

Clint shakes his head. “Only reason they didn’t go for him earlier is that he doesn’t know shit.”

“Bullshit,” Kate says. “How would they even know that? You’re just scared. Scared of other people actually wanting to help you. So you make it so we can’t.”

“Wasn’t his story to tell,” Barney says, from the bed. Claire puts her head in her hands. “Don’t think he knows the half of it.” He looks up at Steve and says, “Wasn’t thinking straight by the time you were -- there. Sorry.”

"You need to stop arguing in here," Claire says. "I have to go before I lose my job, and one of you needs to be with him at all times. If he gets worse, you _phone_ me, okay?"

Steve thinks about Barney spitting in the guy’s face, and then he thinks about how there was a moment there -- with the gun -- when he thought he was... dead... and then straight after that moment passed -- he thought Barney was dead for sure. But he wasn’t. He was still alive. He doesn’t feel angry about it. He doesn’t feel anything about it, really.

Kate doesn’t know Barney, so she can’t really shout at him, and Claire's still there too, and. So instead, she storms out of the room, grabbing Steve’s arm as she goes and she pulls him along with her. “You should come with me,” she says. “We need to get out of this fuc--” she looks at Luke and the baby, “--futzing building.”

“Have you been to a newsroom?” Jessica asks, waving at her baby. “She has. We’re taking bets on which _swear_ she’ll say first.”

Kate doesn’t say anything, but grabs her bow and quiver, then loops her arm through Billy’s and tugs him up from where he’d been sitting, staring at the floor. “We’re going,” she says, to nobody in particular. She hasn’t actually asked Steve if he wants to go, but he figures he might as well. He kind of wants -- to think. And he’s not sure he can do it here, cramped into this tiny apartment with everyone he knows and some people he doesn’t know too.

"If your legs?" she says, head twisted back towards him. He's still on his feet. He shrugs. They feel a bit wobbly, but now that she's mentioned it, he's desperate to get out of here. There's always -- cabs.

And the baby’s crying now.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “You’re all going -- now? Don’t you think Steve at least deserves --"

He looks at Steve, as if Steve is going to have an answer for him. He doesn't. 

“Yeah,” Kate says. She’s got her jacket on, even though it’s probably still greasy and hot outside. “We’re leaving. Coming?”

Bucky claps his hands together, looks at Steve again and says, “Sure.”

“I’m staying,” Sam says, because he could have come and Kate would have let him, but he leans over and grabs Steve’s wrist. “You’re gonna be okay?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Steve says, but he smiles at him. “It’ll be good to get out.”

“I hear she’s got a penthouse,” Sam says. “A proper one, not like your apartment. Hot tub.”

“Hey,” Kate says, but she doesn’t contradict him. The heat seems to have left her, but she’s not slowing down. She makes for the door, and Steve leaves, Bucky not far behind.

  


***

  


It turns out Kate only lives a few blocks over, but it’s definitely cooler than -- Clint’s building is. She’s got the whole top floor, and it’s really nice. Exposed brick walls, big beams, and light everywhere. They walk up the stairs to get to it.

On the way over, Bucky and Kate had walked together, Billy a bit ahead of them, and Steve just slightly behind. Kate had looked back a few times, but hadn’t said anything to him. Bucky had glanced back at him once too. His legs had felt less stiff as they'd gone on, but the bruising is still there, and they still hurt. He half-collapses onto the sofa, but when Bucky looks concerned he says, "It's fine." 

He doesn't want to go to the hospital. He grits his teeth, and then consciously relaxes his jaw, breathing deeply.

They’ve been there for like half an hour when the girl in the track jacket comes in from the roof. Kate doesn’t seem surprised to see her. She’s just got shorts and a t-shirt on today, and her hair’s big from the humidity. “This is America,” Kate says, and the girl raises her eyebrows as if to dare either of them to make a joke. There are stars and stripes on her shoulders.

“So,” Kate says. “Steve. Ask questions. You’re freaking me out.”

“What’s there to ask?” Steve says. “Clint’s brother’s not dead, and you guys know...” He frowns, and then says, “uh. So -- Billy --" he looks at him, but Billy doesn't look up "-- does he -- do you do -- magic?”  
  
Kate groans. “If you let him,” she says. “Usually we don’t let him.”

“Hey,” America says. Billy claps his hands together but doesn’t say anything.

“Hey yourself,” Kate says, and clasps one of his hands. “I love you, Billy, I just don’t like magic so much.”

He shakes his head, ruefully, but doesn’t say anything. He seems kind of out of it, still.

Bucky’s in the kitchen. “I can’t see any eggs in the fridge,” he calls.

“I don’t keep food here,” Kate calls back to him. “All my food’s at Natasha’s.”

Bucky comes back into the room. “You’re a very strange woman,” he says.

“You sound like Natasha,” she says. “Takeout menus in the drawer under the fancy lamp.”

Bucky looks around the room, and then back at her. “Okay, the _pink_ fancy lamp,” she says.

Bucky’s about to order some pizzas when his phone rings. “Yeah, yeah,” he says into it. “Don’t worry, I can be there in like fifteen.” He hangs up, grimaces, and says, “Rebecca. Have to call a raincheck on that pizza, kiddo.”

“It’s really creepy when you call me that,” Kate says, and takes the menu from him. “We’ll just have to order without you.”

“Sure,” he says. “Don’t let me stop you.” He runs a hand through his hair, and goes to leave. “Steve,” he says, at the door. “You’ll be okay here?”

Steve looks at him. Bucky looks tired. About as tired as he feels. He hadn’t -- he hadn’t noticed that. He hadn’t -- he hadn’t looked at him long enough to notice.

“I’ll be as okay here as anywhere,” Steve says. His voice still seems alien, but he feels his mouth as it forms the words. His tongue is heavy.

Bucky shakes his head. “Do you --” he says, and then stops, and shakes his head, and leaves. Billy goes with him.

“I’m going to find Teddy,” he says. “He’ll - I want to tell him about it.” Kate nods, and gives him a one-armed hug, and Steve wonders what’s wrong, but doesn't want to ask.

He stands in the doorway and stares out at the empty hallway for a long time.

  


***

  


“So,” America says. She made them order Korean food instead, and she keeps taking Steve’s rice. “Billy’s magic. Clint’s a washed-up ex-avenger --”

“Hey,” Kate says, without any heat to the words.

“Hey yourself,” America says. “Your words, princess.”

“Clint used to be an avenger?” Steve says. “What -- is he magic too?”

Kate laughs, horribly. America pulls a face. “No, the archery thing.”

“Archery?” Steve says. “Don’t the avengers fight -- magic? What’s an arrow going to do against magic?”

“ _Hey_ ,” Kate says.

“Don’t tell me you’re an avenger too,” Steve says.

“No,” Kate says, her nose wrinkled up, as if she’s smelt something bad. “But I took out a load of those stupid dudes in tracksuits yesterday.”

“Who else,” America says. She starts to tick them off on her fingers. “Jessica --”

“Yeah, I know about her,” Steve says.

“Luke --”

“He’s still got his heroes for hire thing,”  Kate says.

“Danny --”

“Danny doesn’t live there,” Kate says.

“You’ve clearly never been to visit Luke and Jessica on a weeknight,” Steve says.

“Natasha --” Steve shrugs, because he’d always known that there was something up with Natasha “-- Patsy, Marc...”

“Marc,” Steve says. “Marc, who turned up in his pyjamas when I was hurt this afternoon.”

“That’s his costume,” Kate says. “He only goes out at night so I kind of assumed it was so that he wouldn’t get run over by any cars.” Steve looks at her long and hard.

“I can’t tell if you’re shitting me,” Steve says. “So what, I’m the avengers’ caretaker?”

“Only Clint and Jessica were ever actually avengers,” Kate says. “Well, and Natasha, _maybe_ , but I’ll be honest with you, I’m still not sure what she does. The rest of them just punch bad guys sometimes.”

“Anyway,” America says. She finishes off the last dumpling, and then stares at him. “You’re not mad,” she says. It’s not a question. “I thought you’d be mad. I didn’t realise they were all lying to you the whole time.”

“It’s not really lying,” Kate says. “What, hey Steve, sometimes I fight two-bit criminals in the street?”

“What about Sam?” Steve asks.

Kate looks at him, and says, “tell me you _don’t_ not know about Sam.”

Steve blinks at her. She slumps forward in her chair.

He wishes Peggy was here.

  


***

  


Steve had kissed Peggy before he’d ever kissed Bucky, although it’s strange to think about that now. They only kissed that one time. They’d been studying late, and Peggy was very pretty and had these curls in her hair that Steve couldn’t work out, how could hair even do that. And he walked her out of his apartment and to the corner of his block, and she’d said, “goodnight,” and Steve had kissed her.

She’d kissed back, and pressed her hands to his chest. When he pulled away, she’d said, “are you quite sure about that, Steve.”

He’d said “I don’t know what you mean,” and then wiped his mouth with the back of his thumb.

  


***

  


The next morning he’d got to school, and Bucky had said, “nice study date?” and hadn’t really met his eyes, and Steve had thought, _Oh_.

It was what, junior year still? Steve wiped at his lips with his hand, like he was worried Bucky could see it, like Peggy’s mouth had dyed his mouth a new colour, that Bucky could tell just by looking at him, but she -- she hadn’t even been wearing lipstick. And he’d washed since then, scrubbing at his face with soap that he didn’t realise yet made his skin dry and tight and dull. And Steve liked Peggy -- but Steve liked Bucky, too, and it -- he’d never realised it before, but he felt like he was already in the middle of that one. 

It’s funny, Steve thought he’d forgotten how it had happened, but it comes back to him sometimes. He presses a hand to his eyes, which are closed. He doesn’t remember closing them.

He thinks of Bucky as he was then. He thinks about the smell of his hair, and about putting his hand to the inside of his elbow, the little gap there. Not that that happened right then. Was that the arm he’s lost?

“Bucky,” he’d said, “Bucky, will you look at me, you’re making this harder.”

“Steve,” Bucky had said, still refusing to look at him. “She’s great -- you don’t really need to explain it to me. You really --” and then he’d stopped talking.

And then Steve had said, “well that’s great, and I’m glad you like Peggy, but she’s just started going out with a girl from her drama class.”

Bucky had gone still, and had only looked up when Steve -- when he’d touched his arm like that. And then he’d kept looking at Steve when he kissed him, because he forgot to close his eyes, and he kind of forgot to kiss him back until Steve had almost pulled away. It was weird. They broke apart, laughed, and then tried it again, and Bucky closed his eyes that time.

Steve, too.

 

***

 

It's only now, so much later, pulling the fragments together, that Steve thinks, maybe he should have said -- maybe he shouldn't have said it like that. That Peggy wasn't a threat because she was dating somebody else. Maybe Steve should have said - I'm glad you like Peggy, _but I like you._

  


***

  


“What did you think I meant?” Sam says. It’s late, and he’s crouched down by Steve’s feet. Kate had called him, maybe. Steve can’t really think how he got there. It’s like a dream, but it’s not a dream. He’s still -- the part of his brain that’s still rational thinks, this is shock. Whatever Claire could look at, bandage, she couldn’t fix that. His nerves. His head. He sees the gun again, like it’s inches away from him, and breathes. There is no gun. He knows that. “You’ve seen my costume, man. What did you think it was for?”

“I thought it was - a glider,” Steve says. He flaps his hand in the air. It feels warm. The air.

“And you also thought I was a pilot.”  
  
“Well,” Steve says. “Yeah.”

Sam shakes his head. “One day I’ll have to take you flying.”  
  
“I don’t even like planes,” Steve says. He means, _NO_. He pauses for a long time, and then says, “so what about the birds?”

“Oh, the birds are real,” Sam says. “I can talk to them, too.”

“No you can’t,” Steve says.

“Well,” Sam says. “I can talk to them, but it doesn’t mean they listen.”

  


***

  


Kate tucks Steve in on the sofa with a big fluffy yellow blanket. He’ll go home in the morning, he thinks. Sam’s already left -- he’s got to keep an eye on Clint, he says. Steve doesn’t doubt that.

“Oh,” she says, thoughtfully, as she gets him a glass of water. “America’s magic, too.”

“Am not,” America says, her voice coming from Kate’s bedroom.

“Well,” Kate says. “She’s _something_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this is pretty short - i just wanted to get it up since it had been so long. hopefully more will be coming soon.


	6. the smell of rain-washed pavements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while, huh? 
> 
> thanks to everyone on twitter who helped me decide which superhero would smell the weirdest. obviously the most crucial question of them all.
> 
> thanks to everyone who's still reading!! you're the best.

 

when the smell of the rain washed pavement  
comes up clean, and fresh, and cold  
and the street lamp light fills the gutter with gold  
**my time of day - frank loesser (guys & dolls)**

**\---**

 

 

Steve doesn’t go home the next morning. He wakes up on Kate’s couch with a fuzzy taste in his mouth and a terrible headache. Kate is standing over him with a tall glass of water. “You should probably wake up now, Steve,” she says. “It’s almost twelve.”

He sits up and takes the water and downs almost the whole glass straight away. “I’ll make you up the spare bedroom tomorrow,” she says. Steve looks around. Oh yeah. He’d forgotten that Kate has the biggest apartment he’s ever seen. Bigger than the apartment on _Friends_. He looks at his legs, and wishes he hadn't. The bruises are _bad_. He stands up and his legs hurt really bad. But again -- they feel slightly better, less stiff, when he walks. But the ache is still there.

Sam had brought some of Steve’s stuff over last night, so he showers and gets dressed in clean clothes. He becomes very aware of the buttons of his shirt halfway through doing them up, and they feel strange under his fingers. Pearly and cold. The fabric is rough, with a heavy weave, and he’s glad for it. He is very resolutely not thinking about yesterday.

“Come on,” Kate says. “We’re going to get ice-cream.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be,” Steve says. “I have a job to do.”

“No,” Kate says, “and you don’t either.”

It’s a very sunny day. Steve doesn’t really have it in him to argue. They get on the Q, and end up at a hole-in-the-wall place near Washington Square Park. Steve gets soft scoops of a cereal-flavoured ice cream covered in cornflake crunch. “Breakfast,” he says, and feels the croak in his voice, but Kate smiles.

They sit in the park, and Kate gossips to him about all the students around them. “You’re at NYU?” he says, feeling kind of betrayed. They’re kind of surrounded by the campus. He thinks about his class and tries to remember when they’re next meeting but -- he can’t. He should know this! It’s always the same time. He closes his eyes and then opens them again.

Maybe he’s not doing great today still.

“Technically,” she agrees, “but this is just intuition.”

“That your superpower, is it?” Steve says.

“Nope, that’s my aim,” she says, flexing her arms. “This came extra.”

 

***

 

It’s later in the day, and they’re in a different park. Steve’s rubbing one of his arms, trying to work out if he’s burned, and he says without thinking, “so what’s up with Bucky’s arm? How can he feel a pulse with it?”

“Uh?” Kate says.

“I mean,” Steve says. “His -- metal arm. He checked Barney’s pulse with it.”

Kate pauses. “I think you’d have to ask him,” she says. “But it’s not -- it’s not a standard prosthetic. I think it was grafted to his ner--”

Steve emphatically waves both hands in the air. This was a bad idea. He feels nauseated. Kate stops talking.

“Can we go back?” he says. It’s just starting to get dark. He wants to eat something plain for dinner. They didn’t really have lunch, just -- ice-cream.

“To mine?” Kate says. Steve looks up at the sky. It’s clear. Deep blue.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. They get on the subway and it’s cold. Steve always forgets that it’s cold down here.

 

***

 

America comes over again that evening. She and Kate sit on the couch and put on a series of bad films that they don’t watch because they’re texting.

 _Teenagers_.

Actually, Kate’s not a teenager, but close enough. He has no idea how old America is, but she’s young. Maybe nineteen.

“Bucky asks if you’re okay,” Kate says at one point, tilting her head towards where Steve’s sitting in a corner, reading one of the few books he found in Kate’s apartment. It’s a romance novel told entirely in _emails_.

“Huh?” Steve says, wrenching his eyes away from the book a few seconds too late.

“Bucky wants to know if you’re okay,” Kate repeats, amused.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, yes. I am. Okay.”

“Well, I’ll let him know,” she says. “Excellent choice of reading material.”

“It’s your book,” Steve mutters, but he keeps reading.

 

***

 

He wakes up the next morning in the spare bedroom and the apartment is empty. There are some keys on the coffee table, with a piece of paper that just says _STEVE!!!_ on it. He takes the keys and runs his fingers along them. He feels okay today. He thinks -- now that he’s been away for a couple of days, he thinks maybe it’s time to go home.

Why was he here, anyway? So next, of course, he thinks again about the fight outside his building -- Clint’s building -- and he takes a big breath in. No -- it’s okay to feel like this. Or, no. It’s not okay, but it’s how he feels. You can’t -- it takes time.

Sam’s being going on at him about therapy for a long time and he’s still not -- but he knows that there’s no point in beating yourself up for how you feel. And he’s still kind of scared. But he’s out of new books to read (he’d read the other romance novel that Kate owns until the early hours) and he’s kind of out of clothes, too. So he’s going to go back. Maybe not to stay. But it’d also be good to check that the plumbing hasn’t collapsed without him.

 

***

 

When he gets there, Marc is by the front door. He’s in his pyjamas again, but Steve takes a closer look, and he grudgingly admits that it _could_ be a costume. It’s all-white. And -- maybe most people don’t wear a waistcoat and a tie with their pyjamas.

Steve stops and kicks at the ground next to him as _Hello_. “So you’re caught up in this whole mess too, huh?” he says.

Marc jumps a bit, like he maybe hadn’t seen Steve. Like maybe he’d been asleep on his feet. But he recovers well. “We all are,” he says. “It’s why the rent’s so cheap.”

He yawns, and Steve says, “maybe you should ask about swapping to nights,” and then he squares his shoulders and goes in. Right - this was fine, wasn’t it. There was nobody about outside, other than Marc. He chances a look back over his shoulder. It’s like it never happened. It’s like the men were never even -- there.

He takes the stairs two at a time up to his apartment, thinking very hard about his breathing, in and out. And then he stops, after doing this a couple of times, because his legs are _screaming_.

He takes the elevator the rest of the way up.

He looks around at his stuff. It all looks the same! He packs a few books and he grabs his phone charger. His phone’s been dead since it died that first night at Kate’s. Actually -- he sits down and he plugs his phone in. He doesn’t have anywhere to be.

When it comes back on, there are a few messages. There’s one from Sam, that says:

            on my way over now

He clearly sent it _that_ night and Steve just didn’t see it. There’s a text from Clint apologising without actually saying anything else, and there are two texts from Cait -- one asking if he wants to get a drink, and one about the class. Oh yeah. Shit. It was -- last night. And then there are some texts from a number he doesn’t have in his phone, from the previous night. They say:

            hey, are you doing okay?

            i know, what an awful question. i always hated it. you know that.

            how are you doing, then?

He stares at them and presses his thumb to the screen to stop it from going dark. He’s not sure, but also he’s certain that the texts are from Bucky.

Bucky has his number, and texted him. Sure, just to check he was okay -- he remembers Kate asking him, from Bucky, while he was reading that silly book. But now he has his number too. It feels like a secret, even though he’s not. Should he reply? What does it mean that this is what it took to make them talk to each other again, like people who know each other, and not just acquaintances who have a few friends in common?

He’s still thinking about the texts as he finishes packing his bag, and he slips his phone into his pocket. Maybe he’ll think of some funny way to reassure Bucky and make him tell Steve about how he’s doing. What he’s doing. What’s he up to? Steve doesn’t really know him anymore, and it hurts. He walks down the stairs, slowly, thinking about who he should check up on, but before he can knock on any doors, somebody’s calling his name.

“Steve!”

It’s Rebecca. Steve’s heart doesn’t leap, but it lurches some. Is Bucky here? She tugs on his hand and pulls him into her apartment, leaving the door wide open. “How are you?” she says.

“Holding up,” he says. “How’s it all going here?”

“Oh, fine,” she says. “Luke and Jessica’s oven broke but Clint ordered a new one --” she pauses at Steve’s audible noise of distrust “-- and Bucky’s going to install it.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s probably fine. Maybe I’ll be here, though.”

“I think you’re due a break,” she says, with a shrug. “Anyway, I hear Kate’s apartment is great.”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve says. “I still haven’t found this hot-tub, though.”

She laughs. “Well, maybe she’s been reserving it for... you know.”

“What?”

She laughs again. “Oh, you know. They haven’t exactly been very secretive.”

Steve’s heart lurches again, and not in a pleasant way. He thinks of Bucky walking with Kate to her apartment, confidently. Like he knew the way there. Because he _knew the way there_.

“I’ve been trying to ask Bucky how he feels about it,” she continues, “but he keeps his heart pretty close to his chest, you know? He seems happy enough, though.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Yeah.” He has seemed happier, recently. He guesses. From what he’s seen of him, which isn’t much. Well -- not when he was wiping blood from Steve’s face. Or... after. But. In general. In recent weeks. But then, Steve had suspected that he’d always seemed happier -- _always_ beginning sometime after they broke up, which is in their prehistory, when they were both young and scrawny and stupid -- when he wasn’t near Steve. When he didn’t have to look at him.

She frowns. “You really do need to take a vacation,” she says. “You look tired. I’m sure if you ask, Kate will let you use her pool.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “I’ve been feeling kinda homesick, anyway.” Maybe Kate’s been waiting until he’s gone to invite Bucky over. Maybe he should -- tell her that he’s leaving.

No. That’s not fair. Kate has been great. This is all on Steve.

He breathes. “Anyway,” he says, “Know if anyone needs anything doing? Probably going to head out soon but I’m happy to my job first.”

She scratches at her head. “I don’t think so,” she says. She hesitates. “You could check with Clint,” she says. “I think he’s still on the roof.”

Of course he is. Steve laughs, and says, “Sure.”

“I think he’d be happy to see you,” she says. She pats him on the cheek. “Stay safe.”

 

***

 

“How’s Barney?” Steve asks. Clint is, of course, on the roof. He’s near the edge, like that time at the party, only there are no teens around and this time he’s holding a bow and he’s got a quiver full of arrows slung over his back.

“He’s alive,” Clint says. He doesn’t move -- he’s scanning the area for trouble, even though there’s nothing as far as Steve can see. He doesn’t seem surprised that Steve is here. “Which is still hard to wrap my head around.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I can see that.”

“I’ve put him in the empty apartment on the first floor,” Clint says. “He doesn’t mind the smell from whatever it was that Doreen was doing in there.”

“Squirrels, man,” Sam says, and Steve whirls around. Sam waves at him from where he’s sitting, at the other end of the roof. He’s got a lot of books strewn around him, so it’s good that the weather’s holding. “I tell you every time, and you never listen. She was keeping squirrels.”

“Where do you find these people?” Steve says, but before Clint can answer, he says, “no, never mind.”

Nobody says anything for a moment. Steve walks over next to Clint. Clint still doesn’t look at him.

“He tell you what it’s all about?” Steve asks.

Clint sighs, and says, “I think he’s a fed.”

Steve blinks. “Yeah,” Clint says. “I’m still kind of...” he trails off as he stares down at the street.

“I think I’m going to stay at Kate’s for a bit longer, if she’ll have me,” Steve says. He knows she will. “But I’m on my cell, and I’m not far away if you need me.”

Sam walks over and hugs him. Clint shifts as if he knows he should react somehow but isn’t sure how. “You’re doing okay?” Sam says. He rubs at his head.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “I’ve been better. But it’s good to have a break.”

“Come on,” Sam says. “I’ll walk with you. I could do with getting out of here myself. As could someone else.” He looks at Clint, who pretends not to know what he’s saying until Sam prods him with his elbow.

“Fine, fine,” Clint says, and finally looks at them both. He looks like shit. His eyes are red and he’s got big scratches across one cheek. “I could go out for some coffee.”

“Sure you could,” Sam says. Sam collects his books and Clint awkwardly folds up his bow, and they both dump the stuff as they head out of the building.

“Oh, I just want to see if Kate’s in,” Steve says, as they walk past Natasha’s floor. “I’ll meet you downstairs in five?” He knocks loudly, and hears Kate call to him to _come in already_.

“Hey,” he says. He stays in the doorway. She’s sitting at her table with Bucky, looking over what -- they look like maps of the neighborhood. He makes himself smile. He’s getting used to that. Kate smiles back, but Bucky gives him a look like, _What?_

Steve has to stop himself shaking his head. They don’t do this anymore! They don’t talk without actually talking! _They don’t even actually talk!_

“I uh,” Steve says. “I got the keys. Mind if I stay at yours for a while?”  
  
“No, that’s okay,” Kate says. “I’ll probably still be here most of the time, so call if you need me. America stops by sometimes to use the hot-tub but she’s got her own key.”

“You never gave me a key,” Bucky says, all wide-eyed and cute and it’s _terrible_.

“I like America more than I like you,” Kate says, and pokes him hard in one of his cheeks. Bucky smiles at her, openly, and then glances over at Steve. Something starts to dawn in his eyes and Steve’s not sure he wants to know _what_ that means.

“Uh,” Steve says. “I’ll -- leave you to it. I’m meeting Sam and Clint downstairs.” He salutes with one hand and pulls the door closed with the other. He presses his head to it for a second, and then walks away as quickly as he can.

 

***

 

“So,” Sam says, as they’re walking towards Kate’s apartment. They’d stopped for coffee, and Steve’s drinking an iced tea. Clint had asked for two extra shots of espresso in his coffee, which he’s drinking black. “A fed, huh.”

“You know this,” Clint says, then relents and glances over at Steve. “You know I inherited the building from my brother? And a lot of money?”  
  
“Oh,” Steve says. “He want it back?”  
  
Clint laughs. It has a slight edge of hysteria to it. “Fuck, no,” he says. “But they do. The guys who...” he indicates towards Steve, and winces. “He’s a fed, I think, was working them over undercover. When they blew his cover, he managed to transfer only so much to me, and then -- he vanished.”

“But he didn’t tell you how he’d got it,” Steve says.

“Well,” Clint says. “He was _dead_.”

“He’s not dead,” Sam says, “and he never was.” They stare up at Kate’s building.

“You ever been up?” Steve asks. Clint shakes his head, but.

“I’m going back,” he says. “I don’t like being gone for too long, you know. This is down to Barney and me, and nobody else.” Steve doesn't say -- _and whoever it is who you've got looking after Barney right now, because you've got a whole ragtag family that you built around you_ \-- because he doesn't have the strength.

Sam rolls his eyes and groans, but doesn’t stop him. “Come on,” he says to Steve, “I’ve had enough of _that_ for today. Let’s watch some Leverage. You know Leverage, right?”

And Steve doesn't, but they do.

 

***

 

“Oh yeah,” Sam says, when they’re settled on the couch and Netflix is loading. “You got a postcard...”

He flips through his journal and hands it over. “I didn’t read it, just grabbed it for you. Was planning on finding you this afternoon if you hadn’t gotten to me first.”

Steve rubs at Peggy’s writing and reads the postcard:

 

> Steve!
> 
> i’d say wish you were here, but it’s dreadfully boring and the weather is foul. it’s too sunny! and dry! you know how much i miss the rain. i think they’re going to wrap up the talks soon so hopefully i’ll be back before you know it... i’ll try and bring back some kind of horrible local booze and caramel tart for you to make up for it.
> 
> peg xox
> 
>  

 “Thanks,” Steve says to Sam, and smiles. He pins it to Kate’s fridge with a magnet.

 

***

 

It’s only a few days later, when thumbing mindlessly through his phone, that Steve remembers Bucky’s texts. He deletes all three, and doesn’t realise until after they’ve gone that that means that he doesn’t have Bucky’s number any more, either.

Good, he thinks. It’s probably for the best.

 

***

 

He’d forgotten the texts from Cait, too. He thinks guiltily about the class again, and all the reading he hasn’t done. Was that the last class? Is it over now? When’s the exam? It’s like he’s forgotten everything.

It doesn’t really matter though. He _does_ have enough credits to graduate. But he likes Cait, and he liked the class, and it’s a shame for it to end like this. He thinks about the way she smiles, and he thinks about her hair, and he thinks about her pressing her fingers to the spot between his eyebrows. What would she think of me now, he thinks. And then he thinks, she’d still want me to be happy. _And what would make me happy?_ He’s very resolutely not thinking about Bucky or Kate. He wants _them_ to be happy, too. So not thinking about what that means is probably best.

He texts Cait before he can think himself out of it.

            Hey, sorry I vanished. House troubles. How’re you? x

She calls him back five minutes later, and he takes a deep breath, and answers.

 

 

 


	7. but somehow it is summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, i did say i'd try and get this new chapter up soon...

 

 

  ah, bubblegum fossils are beautiful to you  
trees and footballs and the train choo-choos  
supposed to bring you luck  
but sometimes it is rain  
but somehow it is summer  
sing it on your walkman   
sing it as you walk the rails alive, 1969  
i'm beginning to see the light  
i'm beginning to feel all right

  
i really can't describe it at all

**moments in the snow - comet gain**

**\---**

 

 

 

 

 

It’s good talking to Cait. He’d forgotten -- well, it’s not like they’d hung out that many times. And they’d never moved beyond that liminal, unspoken, is this a date kind of place. But, well -- yes, it’s good to talk.

“What do you mean by house troubles?” she says, after catching him up on what he missed at the final class.

“Oh, well,” he says. He rubs at his eyes and he’s glad she can’t see him. “Do you -- do you want to get a coffee?”

“Now?” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can come to you.”

 

***

 

They’re at Poor Yorick’s again, and Steve orders an iced tea again. He’s trying to cut down on coffee, and he thinks -- he thinks he feels better without it. Well. The headaches aren’t so great, but. He stirs the tea and adds sugar, and Cait eats a small amount of her cappuccino’s foam with a spoon while looking at him expectantly.

He’d been wondering on the way over here how best to talk about it, because -- well. They’re secret identities. He probably shouldn’t talk about -- the superhero thing.

Although if she reads the cape pages, maybe she’s already worked it out, he thinks, sourly. Did everyone else in New York know before he did? It’s not like they kept the secret very well, he tells himself. _They thought you’d work it out. It’s not their fault that you didn’t._

So what does he say? “There was a fight on my block,” he says. “Just -- just opposite the building. I tried to stop them smashing somebody’s head in, and, ah. There was a gun.” He presses his fingers to his mouth and looks down at his tea. There’s still ice in it. They gave him a flimsy plastic cup, even though he said he was going to sit in.

“Steve,” Cait says, concerned. He looks up at her and she’s leaning forward. She touches his arm. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” he says. It's mostly true, although his legs still look like a disaster. But they're healing. “Some other people came by before anything -- happened.” It’s not quite true, but close enough. “But it just shook me, you know? I haven’t been caught in anything like that before. Good thing I used to teach self-defense.” He flexes slightly, without thinking, and then hates himself for it.

“Well,” she says. “I hope you’ve done something nice since to make up for it.”

“Oh, you know,” he says. “I’m taking a bit of a vacation. Staying at my friend Kate’s for a while.”

“Where does Kate live?” she says.

“Just south of Williamsburg,” Steve says.

“That is not a vacation,” Cait says, flatly. “It doesn’t count as a vacation if you don’t leave the city. You haven’t even left Brooklyn.”

“Hey,” Steve says. “I like the city. And we’re in Manhattan right now.”

“No, I refuse,” she says. “This is too sad. We’ve got the final exam next week, and then after that we’re both free, right? Let’s take a road-trip somewhere. Let’s go to the _West Coast_.”

Steve has never been further west than, like, Chicago. And that was only one time. For a _wedding_.

His heart hammers in his chest a bit. “I think I’ll be back at work then, Cait,” he says.

“Pfft,” she says. “How long since you’ve taken a real break? I bet you’ve been stopping by to check up even though you’re not meant to be working.”

Steve ducks his head.

“You said you’re friends with your landlord, right?” she says. “I bet I can convince him to let you have the time off.”

It would be nice, Steve thinks. “Fine,” he says, although he’s not sure it is fine. “Where do you want to go?”

He’s not really thinking of it as real. Do people really just decide to do things like this and then -- do them?

She tosses her head back. “I think that’s up to you,” she says. “We could do LA, or somewhere that’s like, calmer in California -- I’m sure you’d enjoy reading on the beach. Or how about the Pacific Northwest? It’s so beautiful, Steve.”

“It rains a lot there, doesn’t it,” Steve says.

“That’s part of why it’s so beautiful,” she says. “It’s so green.” But Steve hadn’t meant it was a bad thing. He’s taken to listening to recordings of rain -- rainy thunderstorms -- when he’s trying to sleep. Because sleep isn’t -- isn’t coming that easily to him right now. Where would they sleep? Motels? And how would they pay for it?

He sits back and thinks, just think about the nice things you could do. Just think about that for a while. He tries to relax. He tries to think about the rain on his head, like fingers playing with his hair, scratching at his head. He closes his eyes. He think he’d like to go north, if they go.

“I’m not kidding about convincing your landlord for you,” Cait says. She tilts her head and her hair tumbles down, covering her face. She pushes it out of the way, like she’s surprised that there’s so much of it. “Anyway, I want to see this building of yours.”

“I can take you there,” Steve says. He didn’t even think it, he just said it. He’s not used to existing this much on _impulse_.

“Really?” she says. “Guess I’d better drink up.”

 

***

 

“So, this is the building,” he says. He feels stupid. He’s looking at it through new eyes. It’s not that impressive - but it’s a bit taller than the other buildings nearby. It’s why you can get such a good view from the roof. “This is home, I guess.”

“Hmm,” she says. “What, aren’t you going to take me in?”

“Oh, of course,” he says, and he pulls his key out from his back pocket and holds the door open for her. He starts to take the stairs before he thinks -- maybe she’d rather take the elevator? But she follow him and seems to match his pace fine, so he thinks, okay.

Jessica and Luke have their door open, so Steve pokes his head in to say hi, and he introduces Cait to them. Jessica’s sitting at the desk writing something, though, and Luke and Danny are doing something in the kitchen, so they don’t stick around. “You know where to find me if you need me,” Steve says to them, “I’m still on my cell.”

“See,” Cait says, once they’ve left. “ _Definitely_ in need of a break.”

They pause again when they get to Natasha’s apartment. “I’ll see if Kate’s in,” Steve says. “You can meet your name-twin.”

“What? Oh,” she says.

“She’s housesitting for Natasha,” Steve says, as he raps on the door.

“Come in,” Kate calls, and so they go in.

 

***

 

Cait and Kate are busy hashing out plans for Steve and Cait’s roadtrip -- Steve should have realised that this would be the consequence of introducing them to each other, he thinks -- but the whole thing makes Steve feel a bit -- off, so he says he’s going to go and find Clint to make sure that nothing’s about to collapse without him.

“Yeah, fine,” Kate says, “you come and find us when you’re done with that.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be the building -- Steve’s building -- if he didn’t bump into someone on the way up. It’s Rebecca. She’s got a pair of sunglasses perched on her head, and her hair’s up in a top-knot. “Steve!” she says. “Bucky and I were just talking about you.”

“Uh,” Steve says, wrongfooted.

“Nothing bad,” she says, slightly wickedly.

“I was just at Kate’s,” he says, “with, uh, my friend Cait. How are they doing?”

“How are _who_ doing?” Rebecca says. “If you mean Clint and Kate, they’re still barely speaking, but I keep catching them on the roof together with their archery gear.”

“No,” Steve says, “sorry, I meant -- Bucky and Kate. I don’t know why I asked, I’m sure they’re the same as they were the other day.”

Rebecca looks at him, puzzled. “Oh,” she says. “You don’t think --” she laughs. “You’re _staying_ with her!”

“What?” Steve says. His stomach is a black hole. A pit that leads to the centre of the earth. He feels a tremor running through one of his legs.

“Kate and _Bucky_ aren’t dating,” she says. “Kate’s with that friend of hers with the themed jackets -- America, I think. What a _name_.”

The centre of the earth swells with lava. Is there even lava down there? What is it. Something hot. _Steve_ feels hot. “Oh,” he says, and then he laughs. Of course. America. What was it that Kate had warned him about? _America stopping by to use the hot-tub_.

She laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “I know we all thought that they were -- well, you know. But Bucky seems happy with how it’s played out... anyway, what are you up to? I thought you were on a break from all this.” She waves a hand around to indicate to the fixtures in the stairwell, by which she means the building at large.

“Oh, I was just showing my friend Cait around, but she got waylaid with Kate,” he says, and laughs to himself again about their names and hopes that Rebecca understands what he means. He’s mentioned Cait to her before, it’s fine. “They’re planning out a road-trip Cait and I are going to take. We’re thinking of setting off maybe next week sometime.”

“Your Cait, not America’s Kate?” she says.

“My Cait,” he confirms.

“Hm,” she says, and fiddles with her sunglasses. “Say goodbye before you go.”

“Of course,” he says. He ducks his head to her and then takes the stairs up in search of Clint. His chest feels like it’s bursting open.

 

***

 

He was so sure that Clint would be on the roof, but he’s not. Sam’s not here either - but then, he’s probably at work.

Instead, there’s Bucky. He’s not standing as close to the edge as Clint does, but near enough that he’s looking down at the street below. He’s holding a big crossbow in his metal hand and... flexing with it. Like he’s testing its weight. Steve presses a hand to his forehead and thinks about leaving, but before he can do that, Bucky sees him.

“Steve!” he says. He immediately lets the arm holding the crossbow go slack. It doesn’t seem to have a bolt in. Good.

“Bucky,” he says. “Hi!”

“How’re you doing?” Bucky asks. He always asks that, now. Steve thinks about the weeks before when Bucky would barely even look at him if they were in the same room, and he doesn’t let himself think about what it means.

“Not too bad,” Steve says. “Enjoying the sun.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bucky says, glancing over his shoulder at the sky.

“Didn’t know you had one of those,” Steve says, gesturing to the crossbow.

“Oh, this?” Bucky says, and for a second Steve thinks that Bucky thinks he means the metal arm and cringes inwardly, but Bucky turns the crossbow over as if it weighs nothing and looks at it thoughtfully. “It’s not mine, Clint gave it to me when I asked to take watch duty today. I’m more used to guns.”

Steve is doing his best not to think about guns. He scratches at his head and tries to think of something to say. Bucky watches him, and seems to realise that talking about guns might not be a great avenue right now. “I quite like this thing though,” he says, still waving the crossbow about a bit - although emphatically _not_ in Steve’s direction. “Look.”

He loads a couple of bolts and aims at a plant pot on the other end of the roof that had some kind of exotic bush in last summer and now is just full of dry earth. There are two _thud_ s as the bolts hit the dirt.

“Good aim,” Steve says. Bucky goes over to the plant pot to retrieve the bolts, and wipes his hands on his jeans, which didn’t look particularly clean to begin with. His hands still look kind of dirty too, but it’s only earth.

“Prereq to borrow any of Clint’s stuff,” Bucky says. Steve nods but can’t think of anything to say. They look at each other, and neither of them looks away for a while.

“How’s Kate’s?” Bucky asks, after the silence has stretched for too long.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Yeah, it’s good. Her aircon is really something. I still haven’t seen the hot tub, though. Maybe I need to look for that sometime.”

You are an idiot, he reminds himself. Her _aircon_. Wow. He really has forgotten how to speak to Bucky. How to act like he knows him.

“You have to be special to be allowed in there,” Bucky says. “She invited me once, but I think she’s found someone else for it now.” He widens his eyes a little as he says it, and stares at Steve, as if he’s trying to tell him something.

“America?” Steve says. “Kate told me to look out for her stopping by for it, but I haven’t seen her since the first night I stayed over there.”

“Well,” Bucky says, “I’m not so sure it’s really her thing, but I think Kate wants to make it her thing. Or maybe it’s just that America’s not so keen on using it _alone_.”

Steve shakes his head. Right, yes. “I can’t believe I didn’t realise that was a thing,” he says. Bucky smiles, quickly. “I had to be told about it _by Rebecca_.”

“Hey, they’re pretty guarded,” Bucky says. He looks around the roof and finds a couple of Clint’s old crates and tests their strength with his boot before sitting down on one. Steve hesitates before taking the other -- Bucky’s boots don’t look clean either -- but then he relents. He kicks back a bit and squints at Bucky, because he’s sitting in direct line of the sun from Steve.

“She seems pretty serious about it,” Bucky says, his voice a bit lower. “But I wonder if...”

“Yeah?” Steve says, when he doesn’t say anything else.

“I dunno,” he says. “She’s a good friend, but she expects a lot and gets frustrated when people don’t live up to her expectations. And they’re both so young. But who knows?” He pushes his hair back from his forehead, and looks directly at Steve. Steve reminds himself to keep breathing. They’re sitting very close, even though Steve’s kind of leaning back. “A lot of people do know what they want when they’re that age. But not everyone. So --”

Steve thinks, is he still talking about Kate and America.

“Well,” Steve says. “I guess we’ve just got to root for them.” If he hadn’t said anything, maybe Bucky would have kept talking, and he’s not sure he could bear that.

If he closes his eyes, he can think of Bucky like he was then. Bucky on the roof of his own apartment building. Bucky at eighteen, with the whole city in front of him. Steve would rest his head on his shoulder, or nudge him out of the way, or he’d say, “how come you’re younger than me but you’re taller than me.” Not that that’s the case anymore, he’s pretty sure.

“I knew you’d shoot up,” his mom had said, _that_ summer. Years after he’d broken up with Bucky. When she was dying.

“Yeah, yeah, you know everything,” he’d said.

Steve doesn’t close his eyes. Bucky is here _now_.

Bucky laughs. “You were always such a middle-aged man,” he says, but it’s fond. It’s like -- a barrier has gone. His hair is longer than it was then. His eyes are still the same kind of slate-blue. But why wouldn’t they be? He’s the same person. Even though he’s different. Prehistory, after all, is still _history_. “Talking about how much you like Kate’s aircon, _rooting for_ her and America...”

“Hey,” Steve says. “What, saying that I’m _rooting for someone_ makes me sound old now?”

“Not old,” Bucky says. “Middle-aged. There’s a difference.”

Steve laughs. “Thirty’s creeping up on you too,” he says.

“Thirty’s not middle-aged,” Bucky says. “Unless you plan on dying when you’re sixty.”

Steve smiles, and doesn’t think about his mother, who died before she was sixty. Well, who never reached sixty. There was no before or after about it.

He pretends to consider it, and then says, “no, I don’t. What’s thirty then?”

“ _Slightly_ less young,” Bucky says.

Steve feels like -- he wishes he could write the whole conversation down and hold it up to the light, because he feels like two thirds of it are happening between the lines. Like if he only wrote it down he could see it. Or it would be there, in invisible ink, or scratches on the page. But all he knows is: this _is_ easy. He can do this. Once they start talking.

They both laugh, and then Bucky says, after a moment, “so, Steve, I was --”

But then they hear voices calling them, and they look up. It’s Kate and Cait. They’re each carrying two cups of coffee.

“That’s Bucky,” Kate says to Cait.

“The one that isn’t Steve, right,” Cait says, brightly. “Hey Steve! Kate said she thought you’d be up here. What a _view_.”

“Oh,” Steve says, “Bucky, this is Cait.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, as he takes a cup from Kate. He blows on it -- it’s still steaming -- and then takes a sip.

“I was thinking of heading off soon,” Cait says, “unless you know anywhere nearby that’s good for dinner?”

“Sure,” Steve says. “Place that does pizza right across the street.”

“I can’t have tomatoes,” Cait says, and wrinkles up her nose. “I know, it’s the worst, I’m sorry.”

“They do a white pizza,” Kate says. “No tomatoes... some kind of white sauce with garlic.” Cait’s eyes go big.

“We can go there,” Steve says, “If you want that?”

“Definitely,” Cait says.

Steve has drunk half of his coffee before he realises that he was trying to _stop_ drinking coffee. Oh well. It doesn’t have to be a habit to be something he can enjoy every now and then.

“Hey,” Cait says, snapping her fingers, “wasn’t I supposed to be convincing this landlord of yours to give you some time off?”

“Clint’s out,” Bucky says. His face is -- closed off again. He’s standing by the side of the roof, with the crossbow in his metal hand and the coffee cup in the other. “He’ll give Steve whatever he wants.”

“Good,” Cait says. “Hey, I’m hungry -- you want to go now?”

“Sure,” Steve says, and drinks the last of the coffee.

“Leave the cups,” Kate says.

“Bucky,” Steve says. His pulse hammers in his throat.

“Yeah?” Bucky says. He doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I think we’re playing games at Sam’s tomorrow night -- it’d be cool to see you there. Kate, you too? He’s got -- he’s got a lot of games.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he nods, slightly.

“Come on,” Cait says. “I want to try and get a table outside.” It sounds good. Steve would like that too. She loops her arm through his, and his head feels so light and airy and hot and he can’t work out what even happened, what the afternoon even was. Bucky -- spoke to him. And he orders a white pizza too, because Kate and Cait were both right, it is delicious.

“So much garlic,” Cait crows, on her third slice. “Guess neither of us is going to be kissing anyone else tonight, right?”

Steve’s brain screeches to a halt. _What?_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS TO ANYONE WHO'S STILL READING, you're the best!!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! i will do my best to update soon. 
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://alwaysalreadyangry.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/tambourine), if you want to send me questions or say hi or just want to follow me to see how it's all going. i will probably post updates on how this is going there.
> 
> i have a spotify playlist for this [here](https://play.spotify.com/user/tigrrmilk/playlist/3R4IG5vjjtSvGGRNNu7IEX).
> 
> and thanks to everybody on twitter who said that this wasn't a terrible idea. this is all your fault.


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